Awarded to: Alexandra Navrotsky
View recipient's web page
Citationist: Masaki Akaogi
Abstract: Lanthanides and Actinides – Why Thermodynamics Matters
Medal lecture in:
Session 18b in Main Hall on Monday 27th June 05:45 - 06:30

Citation: Alexandra Navrotsky was educated at the Bronx High School of Science and the University of Chicago (B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in physical chemistry). After postdoctoral work in Germany and at Penn State University, she joined the faculty in Chemistry at Arizona State University, where she remained till her move to the Department of Geological and Geophysical Sciences at Princeton University in 1985. She chaired that department from 1988 to 1991 and has been active in the Princeton Materials Institute. In 1997, she became an Interdisciplinary Professor of Ceramic, Earth, and Environmental Materials Chemistry at the University of California at Davis and was appointed Edward Roessler Chair in Mathematical and Physical Sciences in 2001. She is currently Interim Dean of the UC Davis College of Letters and Sciences Department of Mathematical and Physical Sciences and Director of the NEAT (Nano and New Materials in Energy, the Environment, Agriculture, and Technology) research group. Her research interests have centered about relating microscopic features of structure and bonding to macroscopic thermodynamic behavior in minerals, ceramics, and other complex materials. She has made major contributions to both mineralogy/geochemistry and to solid state chemistry/materials science in the fields of ceramics, mantle mineralogy and deep earth geophysics, melt and glass science, nanomaterials and porous materials. She has developed unique high temperature calorimetric techniques and instruments and her laboratory the Peter A. Rock Thermochemistry Laboratory, collaborates with scientists all over the world.