(1958- ) American Planetary Scientist, Geophysicist
The rise of Maria Zuber to her position as one of the foremost authorities on planetary geology has been almost as spectacular as the rockets used in the many NASA missions in which she has participated. She has been involved in at least three missions to Mars, including the Mars Global Surveyor Science Team, as well as missions to Mercury and to nearby asteroids. She even discovered an asteroid before she was 30 years old. Using data from topographic and corresponding geophysical surveys collected during these NASA missions, Zuber uses theoretical models and numerical analysis to evaluate the evolution of planets and their various components. She has studied the evolution of the crust and mantle on Mars, Venus, and the Moon, in addition to that on the Earth. These studies evaluate the thickness of crust and circulation in the underlying mantle using surface topography coupled with airborne gravity and magnetic surveys. These analyses involve sophisticated advanced mathematical studies using the polynomial fitting of the shapes. She evaluated the physical properties of Mercury’s core using data from the NASA Messenger mission, of which she was a team member. More recently, she has been studying asteroids and their interiors. Using data from Magellan, she evaluated the tectonics, structure, and volcanism on Venus. She even studied clouds and snow depth on Mars in addition to wrinkle ridges and other structural features.
Closer to home, Zuber has studied mantle convection and the development of mid-ocean ridges on Earth. She has also done extensive work on the tectonics of Australia. Her lunar studies evaluated the volcanism and its relationship to the development of the lunar crust. To show that these numerical models of continental development can have more familiar analogs, she wrote a paper entitled “Folding of a Jelly Sandwich” in an illustration of rheological analyses.
Maria Zuber was born on June 27, 1958, in Norristown, Pennsylvania, where she grew up. She attended the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where she earned a bachelor of arts degree in astrophysics and geology in 1980. She completed her graduate studies at Brown University, Rhode Island, and earned a master of science degree in 1983 and a Ph.D. in 1986, both in geophysics. Her dissertation adviser was Mark Par-mentier. Zuber earned a National Research Council Fellowship in 1985-1986 with NASA at the Goddard Space Center, Maryland. She remained there on staff as a geophysicist in 1987. She joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins University in 1991 as an associate research professor of geophysics after holding the position of visiting professor the previous year. In 1993, Zuber was named to the prestigious first-ever Second Decade Society endowed associate professorship by the Johns Hopkins Alumni Association. Just as she was promoted to full professor in 1995, Maria Zuber moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, where she remains today. In 1998, she was named to the E.A. Gris-wold Professorship, another endowed position that she still holds. She also rejoined NASA in 1994 as a senior research scientist concurrent with her faculty positions. In this role, she is associated with the Goddard Space Center’s Laboratory for Terrestrial Physics. From 1996 to 1999, she was a part-time visiting scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Massachusetts. Maria Zuber has a husband, Jack, and two children.
Maria Zuber is amid a very productive career with authorship on some 93 scientific articles in international journals, professional volumes, and governmental reports. Many of these papers are seminal works on the development of the Earth’s crust, as well as the evolution of planets. In recognition of her many contributions to the Earth sciences both in teaching and in research, several prestigious honors and awards have been bestowed upon her. She received the Thomas O. Paine Memorial Award from the Planetary Society. She received Outstanding Performance Awards every year from 1988 through 1992 and the Group Achievement Awards in 1991, 1993, 1994, 1998, and 2000, all from NASA. From the Johns Hopkins University, she was given the Oraculum Award for Excellence in Teaching and the David S. Olton Award for contributions to undergraduate research. She was also a distinguished leader in science lecturer for the National Academy of Sciences and the inaugural Carl Sagan lecturer for the American Geophysical Union.
Zuber has also performed significant service to the profession. She was president of the Planetary Sciences Section of the American Geophysical Union, in addition to serving as member and chair of numerous committees. She also served on numerous panels and committees at NASA and the National Academy of Sciences. She was also the editor for Planetary Geosciences, associate editor for the Journal of Geophysical Research and on the board of reviewing editors for Science, among others.
