Dante Lauretta
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Dante Lauretta (b. 1970) is an Associate Professor of Planetary Science and Cosmochemistry at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, and Director of the UA's Southwest Meteorite Center. He received a B.S. in Physics and Mathematics from the University of Arizona in 1993 and a Ph.D. in Earth and Planetary Sciences from Washington University in St. Louis in 1997. His research interests focus on the chemistry and mineralogy of asteroids and comets as determined by in situ laboratory analysis and spacecraft observations. This work is important for constraining the chemistry of the solar nebula, understanding the origin of complex organic molecules in the early Solar System, and constraining the initial chemical inventories of the terrestrial planets. He is an expert in the analysis of extraterrestrial materials. In particular, he uses inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, electron microprobe analysis, and X-ray diffraction to study meteorites, lunar samples, and particles returned by Stardust. Lauretta was the recipient of the 2002 Nier Prize of the Meteoritical Society, and the 1995 Nininger Meteorite Award. He is coauthor (with M. Katherine Crombie, Chris Gholson, and Erik Melchiorre) of 'Rich Hill: The History of Arizona's Most Amazing Gold District' and (with Marvin Killgore) of A Color Atlas of Meteorites in Thin Section (2005). He is lead editor of the University of Arizona's Space Science series book “Meteorites and the Early Solar System II” (2006, University of Arizona Press) and the upcoming “Protoplanetary Dust” volume (2009, Cambridge University Press).
Dr. Lauretta is known for his experimental work on the formation of iron-bearing sulfides in the solar nebula. He also worked on the cosmochemical behavior of various elements, such as mercury, boron and beryllium in meteorites.[1]. Lauretta is deputy Principal Investigator for the OSIRIS asteroid sample-recovery project, which hopes to sample Asteroid 1999 RQ36 in 2017 [2].
Asteroid 5819 Lauretta was named in his honor.[1]
