Alexandra Navrotsky

Alexandra Navrotsky is currently a Professor in the School of Molecular Sciences and the School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy at Arizona State University (ASU) in Tempe, Arizona. She is also the Director the newly launched Center for Materials of the Universe (MotU), a collaborative research and education initiative at ASU. Professor 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 until her move to the Department of Geological and Geophysical Sciences at Princeton University in 1985. She chaired that department from 1988 to 1991 and was 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 served as interim dean of the University of California Davis College of Letters and Sciences Department of Mathematical and Physical Sciences from 2013 to 2017. She organized the NEAT (Nano and New Materials in Energy, the Environment, Agriculture, and Technology) research group in 2002 and directed the Peter A. Rock Thermochemistry Laboratory from 1997 until 2019, when she returned to Arizona State University.

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, published more than 900 scientific papers, and continues to collaborate with scientists all over the world.

Honors include an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (1973); Mineralogical Society of America Award (1981); American Geophysical Union Fellow (1988); Vice-President, Mineralogical Society of America (1991-1992), President (1992-1993); Geochemical Society Fellow (1997). She spent five years (1986-1991) as Editor, Physics and Chemistry of Minerals, and serves on numerous advisory committees and panels in both government and academia. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1993. In 1995 she was awarded the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa from Uppsala University, Sweden. In 2002 she was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Earth Science. In 2004, she was elected a Fellow of The Mineralogical Society (Great Britain) and awarded the Urey Medal (the highest career honor of the European Association of Geochemistry). In 2006, she received the Harry H. Hess Medal of the American Geophysical Union. In October 2009, she received the Roebling Medal (the highest honor of the Mineralogical Society of America). In 2011, she became a member of the American Philosophical Society. In 2016 she received the Victor M. Goldschmidt Award from the Geochemical Society. World Academy of Ceramics elected Prof. Navrotsky to Science Professional Member in 2017. In 2020, the European Materials Research Society presented her with the Jan Czochralski Award for her achievements in the field of advanced material science.

Recently, a newly discovered mineral K2Na10(UO2)3(SO4)9·2H2O was named Navrotskyite in her honor.

In addition to being named a Distinguished Lifetime Member of ACerS in 2020, Professor Navrotsky received the Society’s Ross Coffin Purdy Award in 1995 in recognition of the most valuable contribution to ceramic technical literature. She was named an ACerS Fellow in 2001, the same year in which she received the Best Paper Award of the Nuclear and Environmental Technology Division. In 2005, she received the Spriggs Phase Equilibria Award, and in 2016, the W. David Kingery Award in recognition of her lifelong achievements in ceramic science. In the fall of 2020, her paper “Thermochemical Investigation of Lithium Borate Glasses and Crystals” was selected for one of the Best Paper awards from the Journal of the American Ceramic Society for the past year.

Navrotsky is leading the newly established Center for Materials of the Universe, with new research that focuses on planetary materials, materials under extreme conditions (including high pressure and radiation fields), and the role of materials, especially silica, in prebiotic reactions on the early Earth.