[meteorite-list] H. Jay Melosh Elected To National Academy of Sciences

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:14:09 2004
Message-ID: <200304301746.KAA05950_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

H. JAY MELOSH ELECTED TO NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
>From Lori Stiles, UA News Services, 520-621-1877
April 30, 2003

University of Arizona Professor H. Jay Melosh of the Lunar and Planetary
Laboratory (LPL) has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, one
of the most prestigious honors in American science.

The Academy, chartered in 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln to guide public
action in science, yesterday elected 72 new members and 18 foreign
associates from 11 countries in recognition of their distinguished and
continuing achievements in original research.

"Jay Melosh literally wrote the book on impact cratering," said Michael
Drake, head of the LPL and UA planetary sciences department. "His 1989 book
made us all aware of the importance of extraterrestrial impacts in shaping
our Earth. The book ("Impact Cratering: A Geologic Process," Oxford
University Press) is still the universal reference used by all scholars."

-----------------------------------
Contact Information
H. Jay Melosh
520-621-2896 jmelosh_at_lpl.arizona.edu

Michael Drake
520-621-6962 drake_at_lpl.arizona.edu
------------------------------------

Melosh said he learned of his election at 8 a.m. yesterday, when he logged
on his computer to check for an important e-mail message.

He said he didn't expect this one, from UA Regents' Professor and NAS member
J. Randy Jokipii, informing him of his election to the Academy.

About an hour later, Melosh said, Jokipii reached him by phone from a cab
near a Washington, D.C., airport.

"Randy says he tried to get me out of bed with news at 7 a.m. (he would not
have!), but had to settle for e-mail because my home number in the LPL phone
listings is incorrect."

"I've been getting lots of phone calls, lots of e-mails. It is really
amazing," Melosh said. "I'm somewhat surprised. I figure I'd never be
elected because the science I do is sometimes controversial. It tends to
rock the boat."

Melosh said he is reluctant to compare or rank the honors he has been given,
but admits that "this one is certainly way up there."

"Jay's work has helped us understand the origin of the Moon in a giant
impact of a Mars-sized object with the growing Earth. Jay figured out how we
get meteorites from the Moon and Mars, helping us understand that we had
'free' space missions courtesy of mother nature," Drake said.

"He has shown how impacts into the ocean cannot cause havoc the way depicted
in movies like Deep Impact - hint: giant waves break way out to sea and
dissipate their destructive energy by the time they reach shore.

"He has shown how the dinosaurs and most species on Earth perished 65
million years ago when a large impact into what is now Mexico ejected
material up through the atmosphere. This material reentered the atmosphere
like ballistic missiles, heating the atmosphere to hotter than a
conventional oven can achieve, thereby burning plants, animals, and trees
globally," Drake said.

"Jay has shown how enormous landslides travel tens of miles down very
shallow slopes. I could go on, but his contributions to knowledge are
extraordinary.

"Add to this scholarship the fact that he is an extraordinary teacher, and
he represents everything the State of Arizona would want in a faculty
member.

"He is also precisely the type of faculty member who could be recruited by
another university because of the short-sighted budgetary recommendations of
the legislature these past few years," Drake said. "The erosion of the
university's budget must be reversed if we are to retain scholars of the
caliber of Jay Melosh."

Melosh graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor of arts degree in physics
from Princeton University in 1969, and earned his doctorate in physics and
geology from Caltech in 1973. He joined the UA faculty in 1982, where he has
supervised 12 doctoral students in planetary sciences.

Melosh is author or co-author of more than 150 scientific papers and has
served on numerous national and international committees and panels that
guide scientific planning, publications, facilities, and awards in his
discipline. His numerous awards and fellowships most recently include the
Barringer Medal of the Meteoritical Society (1999), Asteroid 8216 "Melosh"
approved by the International Astronomical Union (2000), the Gilbert Medal
of the Geological Society of America (2001), and Fellow of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science (2001).

Melosh is on the 12-member science team for Deep Impact, a $279 million
robotic mission that will become the first to penetrate the surface of a
comet when it smashes its camera-carrying copper probe into Comet Tempel 1
on July 4, 2005.

Those elected yesterday bring the total number of active NAS members to
1,922. Present and former UA faculty members who have been elected to the
Academy are:

* Henry Jay Melosh ­ planetary sciences, Lunar and Planetary Lab - 2003
* Vicki L. Chandler ­ plant sciences - 2002
* J. Randolph Jokipii - planetary sciences, Lunar and Planetary Lab- 2001
* J. Roger P. Angel - astronomy and optical sciences - 2000
* Margaret G. Kidwell - ecology and evolutionary biology - 1996
* Brian A. Larkins - plant sciences, molecular and cellular biology -1996
* William S. Bowers - entomology -1994
* Vernon L. Smith - economics - 1995
* John H. Law - biochemistry and entomology ­ 1992
* William R. Dickinson - geosciences ­ 1992
* C. Vance Haynes - anthropology and geosciences - 1990
* Robert E. Dickinson - atmospheric sciences, hydrology, dendrochronology
- 1988
* W. David Arnett - astronomy and physics ­ 1985
* Donald M. Hunten - planetary sciences, Lunar and Planetary Lab - 1981
* Edward A. Boyse - microbiology and immunology - 1979
* William R. Sears - aerospace and mechanical engineering ­ 1974
* Frank J. Low - astronomy ­ 1974
* Willis E. Lamb Jr. - physics ­ 1954
* Herbert E. Carter - biochemistry ­ 1953

Additional information about the institution is available on the Internet at
http://national-academies.org. A full directory of NAS members can be found
online at http://national-academies.org/nas.
Received on Wed 30 Apr 2003 01:46:27 PM PDT