Alfred Otto Carl Nier was an American physicist who pioneered the development of mass spectrometry. He was the first to use mass spectrometry to isolate uranium-235 which was used to demonstrate that 235U could undergo fission and developed the sector mass spectrometer configuration now known as Nier-Johnson geometry.
Brother Guy J. Consolmagno, SJ, is an American research astronomer, physicist, religious brother, director of the Vatican Observatory, and President of the Vatican Observatory Foundation.
The Meteoritical Society is a non-profit scholarly organization founded in 1933 to promote research and education in planetary science with emphasis on studies of meteorites and other extraterrestrial materials that further our understanding of the origin and history of the Solar System.
Dante S. Lauretta is a professor of planetary science and cosmochemistry at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. He is currently serving as the principal investigator on NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission.
The Leonard Medal honors outstanding contributions to the science of meteoritics and closely allied fields. It is awarded by the Meteoritical Society. It was established in 1962 to honor the first President of the Society, Frederick C. Leonard.
The Nininger Meteorite Award awarded by the Center for Meteorite Studies recognizes outstanding student achievement in the “Science of Meteoritics” as embodied by an original research paper. In 1965, Dr. Harvey H. Nininger and Mrs. Addie D. Nininger endowed the Nininger Science of Meteoritics Fund to the Center for Meteorite Studies at Arizona State University in order to promote interest in meteorite-related topics among young scientists. A number of prominent planetary scientists and meteoriticists have won this award including William K. Hartmann, Hap McSween, and Dante Lauretta.
This award honors members of the Meteoritical Society who have advanced the goals of the Society to promote research and education in meteoritics and planetary science in ways other than by conducting scientific research. Examples of activities that could be honored by the award include, but are not limited to, education and public outreach, service to the Society and the broader scientific community, and acquisition, classification and curation of new samples for research. This award may be given annually, and should be given at least every other year. Winners will be granted lifetime membership in the Meteoritical Society.
The Kavli Prize was established in 2005 as a joint venture of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research, and the Kavli Foundation. It honors, supports, and recognizes scientists for outstanding work in the fields of astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience. Three prizes are awarded every second year. Each of the three Kavli Prizes consists of a gold medal, a scroll, and a cash award of US$1,000,000. The medal has a diameter of 70 millimetres (2.8 in), a thickness of 5 millimetres (0.20 in), and weighs 311 grams (11.0 oz).
Peter H. Schultz is Professor of Geological Sciences at Brown University specializing in the study of planetary geology, impact cratering on the Earth and other objects in the Solar System, and volcanic modifications of planetary surfaces. He was co-investigator to the NASA Science Mission Directorate spacecraft Deep Impact and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS). He was awarded the Barringer Medal of the Meteoritical Society in 2004 for his theoretical and experimental studies of impact craters.
The Gordon A. McKay Award is an annual prize given by the Meteoritical Society to the student who gives the best oral presentation at its annual meeting. This award honors the memory of Gordon A. McKay (1945–2008), a NASA planetary scientist specializing in lunar and Martian geochemistry. It was established in 2008 and comes with a prize of $1,000 and a certificate.
Sir Konstantin Sergeevich Novoselov is a Russian-British physicist, and a professor at the Centre for Advanced 2D Materials, National University of Singapore. He is also the Langworthy Professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester. His work on graphene with Andre Geim earned them the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010.
Laurie Leshin is an American scientist and academic administrator serving as the 10th Director of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and as Vice President and Bren Professor of Geochemistry and Planetary Science at California Institute of Technology. Leshin's research has focused on geochemistry and space science. Leshin previously served as the 16th president of Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
The Cranbourne meteorite is an octahedrite iron meteorite. It is the second largest meteorite found in Australia after the Mundrabilla meteorite, but at the time of discovery it was the largest known iron meteorite in the world. It is classified as a main group IAB meteorite.
Meenakshi Wadhwa is a planetary scientist and educator who studies the formation and evolution of the Solar System through the analysis of planetary materials including meteorites, Moon rocks and other extraterrestrial samples returned by spacecraft missions. She is director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University.
Robert Norman Clayton was a Canadian-American chemist and academic. He was the Enrico Fermi Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at the University of Chicago. Clayton studied cosmochemistry and held a joint appointment in the university's geophysical sciences department. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and was named a fellow of several academic societies, including the Royal Society.
Bhamidipati Lakshmidhara Kanakadri Somayajulu (1937-2016) is an Indian geochemist and a CSIR Emeritus Scientist at Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad. He is known for his studies on ancient and contemporary marine processes and is an elected fellow of several science societies such as the National Academy of Sciences, India, Geological Society of India, Indian Geophysical Union, American Geophysical Union, European Association for Geochemistry, Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards for his contributions to Earth, Atmosphere, Ocean and Planetary Sciences in 1978.
Kunchithapadam Gopalan is an Indian geochronologist and a former emeritus scientist at National Geophysical Research Institute. He is known for his studies on the chronologies of critical rock suites of the Indian subcontinent and is an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy, Indian Geophysical Union and the National Academy of Sciences, India. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards for his contributions to earth, atmosphere, ocean and planetary sciences in 1982.
Nicolas Dauphas is a planetary scientist and isotope geochemist. He is a professor of geochemistry and cosmochemistry in the Department of the Geophysical Sciences and Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago, where he was previously a Louis Block professor, being appointed to that professorship in 2016. His research focuses on isotope geochemistry and cosmochemistry. He studies the origin and evolution of planets and other objects in the solar system by analyzing the natural distributions of elements and their isotopes using mass spectrometers.
