After 27 years at the UA Lunar and Planetary Laboratory/Department of Planetary Sciences, Regents Professor Jay Melosh is leaving to for a position at Purdue.
Jay's is internationally known for his work on impact cratering, planetary tectonics, and the physics of earthquakes and landslides. His UA vitae also lists that his recent research includes studies of the giant impact origin of the moon, the K/T impact that extinguished the dinosaurs and the ejection of rocks from their parent bodies.
Jay is a Fellow of the Meteoritical Society, the Geological Society of America, the American Geophysical Union, and American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was awarded the Barringer Medal of the Meteoritical Society in 1999, the Gilbert prize of the Geological Society of America in 2001, and the Hess Medal of the American Geophysical Union in 2008. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1996-1997 and a Humboldt Fellow at the Bavarian Geological Institute in Bayreuth, Germany, in 2005-2006. Asteroid #8216 was named “Melosh” in his honor. He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2003. He has published approximately 170 technical papers, edited two books and is the author of a major monograph, Impact Cratering: A Geologic Process. He is currently preparing a new book “Planetary Surface Processes” under contract to Cambridge University Press.
A farewell reception is set for Monday, July 27, 2009, at 3:30p.m. in the Kuiper Space Sciences atrium. Please RSVP to Mary Guerrieri by Tuesday, July 21, if you plan to attend.