In Memoriam
The Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory announced that petrologist and long-time Lamont staff member John Longhi passed away in August after battling Parkinson’s disease for three decades. One of the graduates of the powerhouse petrology lab of Jim Hays at Harvard in the 1970s —a lab that also produced Dave Walker, Ed Stolper, and Tim Grove, among others — […]
Geochemist Erik Hauri, whose work upended our understanding of the Moon’s formation and the importance of water in Earth’s interior, died September 5, 2018, in North Potomac, Maryland, following a battle with cancer. He was 52 years old. Hauri joined the Carnegie Institution for Science as a staff scientist in 1994 and spent nearly 25 years investigating the […]
We at the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) are very sad to note that our friend and colleague, Paul Spudis, has passed away. Spudis was an expert in lunar and terrestrial planetary geology, and throughout his career made fundamental contributions to understanding the geology and mechanics of impact basins and craters, the origin and evolution […]
William (Bill) R. Ward passed away on September 20, 2018, at his home in Prescott, Arizona, after a battle with brain cancer. Ward was a preeminent theoretician that made many seminal contributions to our understanding of planetary dynamics and solar system formation. With his thesis advisor, Peter Goldreich, Ward proposed that planetesimals were formed via local […]
Verne R. Oberbeck died on July 25, 2018, after a year of rapidly declining health, including complications of Parkinson’s disease. Oberbeck was born in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin. The third of four boys, Oberbeck and his brothers, lived lives similar to that of Mark Twain’s character Tom Sawyer — freelancing the fun of youth with few toys, but […]
John Edward Westfall, former Professor of Geography and Environmental Sciences at San Francisco State University and Director of the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers, passed away on July 26, 2018. He was 79 years old. Westfall received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, and his Ph.D. from The George […]