Alexandra Navrotsky

Image
Alexandra Navrotsky
Alexandra
Navrotsky
Year
2002
Subject
Earth Science
Award
Benjamin Franklin Medal
Affiliation
University of California, Davis I Davis, California
Citation
For her wide spectrum of accomplishments in crystal chemistry that have importantly contributed to the fields of bonding energies, ceramic and materials research, chemical equilibria, geology, mantle petrology, and thermodynamics. For example, her findings have established, convincingly, the identity of materials at hundreds of kilometers of depth in the Earth that otherwise are inaccessible to direct observation.

Alexandra Navrotsky attended the University of Chicago and received her Bachelor of Science in 1963, her Masters of Science in 1964, and her Doctorate in 1967 from that institution. She began her career in Chemistry at Arizona State University, and then in 1985, joined the faculty at the Department of Geological and Geophysical Sciences at Princeton University. She was chair from 1988-1991 and a founder of the Princeton Materials Institute. In 1997, she joined the faculty of the University of California at Davis as an Interdisciplinary Professor of Ceramic, Earth, and Environmental Materials Chemistry.

Navrotsky's research has crossed many disciplines and focused on the relationships of crystallographic structural features, bonding energies and macroscopic thermodynamic behavior in minerals, ceramics, and other materials. Her laboratory specializes in high temperature, high-pressure, calorimetry research.

Navrotsky was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1993, and is a Fellow of the Mineralogical Society of America, American Geophysical Union, Geochemical Society, and American Ceramic Society.

Information as of April 2002