Alexandra Navrotsky facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Alexandra Navrotsky
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Alexandra Navrotsky with Lee Penn performing the methane mamba chemical demonstration
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| Born | June 20, 1943 |
| Education | Bronx High School of Science |
| Alma mater | University of Chicago |
| Awards | Member of the National Academy of Sciences |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | Arizona State University Princeton University University of California, Davis |
| Doctoral advisor | Ole J. Kleppa |
| Other academic advisors | Hermann Schmalzried |
| Doctoral students | Patricia Dove Nancy L. Ross |
| Other notable students | Paul F. McMillan Rebecca Lange |
Alexandra Navrotsky (born on June 20, 1943, in New York City) is a famous scientist. She is a physical chemist, which means she studies how chemicals behave and change. Her main area of study is nanogeoscience, which looks at tiny materials found in the Earth.
Dr. Navrotsky is a member of important science groups. These include the United States National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. She has won many awards for her work. These include the Urey Medal in 2005 and the Harry H. Hess Medal in 2006.
She used to be a special professor at the University of California, Davis. Now, she is a professor at Arizona State University. She leads a research group called TherMotU. They study how energy and heat relate to very small materials, rocks, and other substances. This helps us understand how materials work in nature and in technology.
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Early life and education
Alexandra Navrotsky grew up in New York. She went to the Bronx High School of Science, a special school for students interested in science. After high school, she studied at the University of Chicago. She earned three degrees there: a bachelor's (B.S.) in 1963, a master's (M.S.) in 1964, and a Ph.D. (doctorate) in 1967. She focused on physical chemistry. Her teacher and mentor was Ole J. Kleppa.
Career and research
After finishing her studies, Dr. Navrotsky traveled to Germany in 1967. She did special research there with Hermann Schmalzried. In 1968, she came back to the U.S. and continued her research at Pennsylvania State University.
Later, she became a chemistry professor at Arizona State University. She taught there for about five years. In 1985, she moved to Princeton University. There, she worked in the Department of Geological and Geophysical Sciences. She even led that department from 1988 to 1991.
In 1997, Dr. Navrotsky moved to the University of California at Davis. She became a professor who studied many different fields. These included ceramics, Earth materials, and environmental chemistry. From 2013 to 2017, she was a temporary dean for science and math. She is now back at Arizona State University. Since 2019, she has directed a center that studies materials from the universe.
Her main areas of study include:
- Solid-state chemistry: This is about how solid materials are made and how they behave.
- Ceramics: These are materials like pottery or bricks.
- Physics and Chemistry of Minerals: This looks at how minerals are formed and their properties.
- Geochemistry: This is the study of the chemistry of the Earth.
Geochemistry
Since 1997, Dr. Navrotsky has worked with a special lab. This lab uses a method called calorimetry. Calorimetry measures the heat changes that happen when materials are formed or changed. She has made the tools in this lab even better.
Dr. Navrotsky uses calorimetry to study many different materials. These include crystalline solids, glasses, and very tiny nanophase material. She also studies porous materials (materials with tiny holes), and materials with water or carbon in them. More recently, she has studied nitrides and oxynitrides.
This research helps scientists understand how materials react with each other. It also shows how they behave in different conditions. This is important for both new technologies and understanding how the Earth works. Her work helps us learn about how atoms bond together and how materials change from one form to another.
Her calorimetry work has also helped us understand perovskite materials. These materials are important for understanding how planets change and move over long periods.
One of her discoveries showed that some materials, like zeolitic and mesoporous phases, have only slightly more energy than their denser forms. This energy difference is linked to how atoms are arranged, not just how tightly packed they are.
Nanomaterials
Dr. Navrotsky's research also focuses on nanomaterials. These are materials that are incredibly small, often just a few atoms wide. She studies their structure and how stable they are. She also looks at how they behave when temperature and pressure change.
She also explores how nanomaterials can affect our environment. For example, she studies how tiny particles move through the air. This research helps us understand their role in global climate change.
She once said:
Nanoparticles are everywhere. You eat them, drink them, breathe them, pay to have them, and pay even more to get rid of them.
—Alexandra Navrotsky, 2010
Awards and honors
Dr. Navrotsky has received many important awards and honors for her scientific work. Here are some of them:
- Alfred P. Sloan Fellow (1973)
- Mineralogical Society of America Award and Fellow (1981)
- American Geophysical Union Fellow (1988)
- Member, National Academy of Sciences (1993)
- President, Mineralogical Society of America (1992–1993)
- Honorary doctorate from Uppsala University, Sweden (1995)
- Ross Coffin Purdy Award, American Ceramic Society Fellow (1995)
- Geochemical Society Fellow (1997)
- Alexander M. Cruickshank Award, Gordon Research Conference (2000)
- Hugh Huffman Memorial Award, The Calorimetry Conference (2000)
- Ceramic Educational Council Outstanding Educator Award (2000)
- American Ceramic Society Fellow (2001)
- American Ceramic Society, Best Paper Award of the Nuclear and Environmental Technology Division (2001)
- Benjamin Franklin Medal in Earth Science (2002)
- Highly Cited Researchers Award, ISI Thomson Scientific (2002)
- Fellow, The Mineralogical Society (Great Britain) (2004)
- Urey Medal, European Association of Geochemistry (EAG) (2005)
- Spriggs Phase Equilibria Award, American Ceramic Society (ACerS)(2005)
- Rossini Award, International Association of Chemical Thermodynamics (IACT)(2006)
- Harry H. Hess Medal, American Geophysical Union (AGU)(2006)
- Roebling Medal, Mineralogical Society of America (2009)
- W. David Kingery Award, American Ceramic Society (2016)
Publications
You can find more of her published works here: [1]
See also
In Spanish: Alexandra Navrotsky para niños
