Continental Style Geochemist Roberta Rudnick was elected in May to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of her work advancing the understanding of the Earth’s continental crust. She and her geochemist husband, Bill McDonough, who directs the university’s plasma mass spectronomy lab, are on sabbatical this academic year doing field research overseas. Terp’s Lauren Brown talked to her between trips to China and the Pacific Northwest.
TERP: What exactly are you looking for during your field research? RUDNICK: Tiny pieces of the Earth’s mantle and deep crust. We use volcanoes as poor man’s drill holes. The deepest-drilled hole on Earth is 12 kilometers, which isn’t even halfway into the Earth’s crust. So if we want samples of this inaccessible part of the Earth, we have to go to places where the Earth has been faulted and these rocks have come to the surface, or where volcanoes have carried them to the surface. TERP: You use the high-tech mass spectrometry lab to analyze the Earth’s real movers and shakers: rocks offering clues to the planet’s formation and evolution. Why is it important to know this? RUDNICK: It’s curiosity-driven, a lot like asking, “Why study a black hole?” or “How did the Earth form?” Our Earth is the only planet in the solar system with continents. Why is that? And it has an enigma in that the building blocks (magma from the mantle) and the edifice (the crust) are differen t. We’re trying to understand this mismatch. TERP: For the past decade, you’ve served as editor-in-chief of the academic journal Chemical Geology, based in Amsterdam. How did you get involved, and why are you stepping down? RUDNICK: It’s sort of a way to give back; it’s a service to the profession. I know how much I appreciate when my papers are handled well and efficiently, and I thought I’d learn a lot with this job, which I have—especially about human nature. But between the significant workload, the sabbatical and the fact I’ll be department chair when I return, it was time to say goodbye. TERP: Since you and Bill met as undergraduates in college, you’ve spent your entire careers together, including at Australian National University and Harvard, and you sometimes collaborate on research. Do you talk a lot of shop at home? RUDNICK: Probably too many dinnertime conversations for our son, Patrick. He’s a Terp starting this fall, majoring in physics. We’ve told him to find his passion and follow that. He says there’s no way on earth he’s going into geology.
Rudnick returned home from her latest trip to China with 215 kilos of rock to analyze.
credit by john t. consoli photo
TERP
fall 2010
13