Miriam Kastner

Miriam Kastner has enjoyed the sciences since she was a child and had originally wanted to be a mathematician, however she had later decided down the road that, math was not the career for her as there were far fewer careers to pursue in maths. Miriam had noticed that not many women were scientists in her early life, which had inspired her to research further about the different sciences.[3] Kastner attended the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1964 where she received a minor in chemistry and a master's degree in geology. Kastner then decided to attend Harvard University, Boston, in 1970, where she was exposed to oceanography and later received her Ph.D. in geosciences. For three years, Kastner was the only woman within her department while studying at Harvard. Thus, women were not taken very seriously by other faculty members resulting in a discouraging environment. Faculty members also expected less from their female students and counterparts, although there were some who supported Kastner and fellow female academics, such as the PhD committee.[3]

Over the course of her career Kastner has progressed from being an associate professor, to a professor, and now a distinguished professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, where she participated in the writing and publishing of 174 articles and journals. Kastner has worked with the Scripps Institution from 1972 till present. Kastner became the second female professor at the Scripps Institute, only two months after the first geophysicist had joined the faculty, this was paving the way for many female scientists at the time and in the future.[2] Previously to educating at Scripps Institution, Kastner worked as a Research Associate at Harvard University in the Department of Geological Sciences until 1970. In 1971 she worked at the University of Chicago as a Research Associate in the Department of Geophysical Sciences. She has accomplished more work than anyone else among the marine geology community and her publications contain high quality data and ideas that show consistency in addressing the big issues in Earth sciences.[4] Miriam Kastner's research is primarily based in mineralogy and petrology, though the most important issue pursued in her career is fluid flow at subducting plate boundaries.[4] Throughout her long and successful career, Miriam Kastner produced dozens of publications highlighting her key research. Her first publication, dating back to 1965, examined the mineral glauconite and documented its properties. Over the next 15 or so years her research focused more on the analysis of deep sea sedimentation. For the next 20 years of her career she continued with her research on deep sea sedimentation but her focus shifted more to hydrogeology and fluid dynamics and the effect of this sedimentation and mineral deposition. In recent years, she has examined isotopes and their concentrations in our oceans. Most recently, Miriam has compiled a brief synopsis of her ocean drilling work over the past 50 years.[5] Along with being a professor, Kastner has served many roles at Scripps Institution of Oceanography including Chair and Vice Chair of the faculty, Associate Director and Director in the Geosciences Research Division, Chair of Academic Senate Committee on Research, as well as Curricular Group Coordinator of Geological Sciences.[6] As a female in a once primarily male dominated profession, Kastner expressed that it was difficult to garner support from science related funding agencies. She was glad to see recent improvement on the increase of women pursuing science related degrees, however she believes there's still room for improvement, despite roughly 50% of women being in a science program, but only approximately 20% are field researchers in the institutes. Young women should have more confidence when applying for field research positions, as support for women in the sciences has improved drastically in comparison to her earlier years.[7]

Kastner's accomplished many things throughout her entire career but much of what she has achieved came from the earlier part of her career when she put her talents to work and directed her focus on the origin of authigenic feldspars, she also focused on zeolites in the oceanic sediments during that time. Delving deeper into the significance of Kastner's work, her first publication named “Notes on the mineralogy and origin of glauconite” documents her findings on the properties and classification of glauconite. Although there were others with documented observations of glauconite the results varied greatly and Kastner was the first to point out that these studies are largely flawed due to the failure to take into account the large deposits of non structural iron oxides which would ultimately skew the results.[8] With the oceanic sediments she determined that the diagenetic transformations of opal-A to opal-CT and quartz is important to the formation of siliceous marine deposits. Kastner also found that dolomite formation is ultimately controlled by its associated pore-fluid geochemistry. The discovery solved an outstanding problem in carbonate mineral science. Kastner's measurements of the Sr distribution coefficient was critical in building strontium concentrations in calcite, which was ultimately used for paleoclimate studies that are dependent on carbonate Sr proxies, the discovery also was used for indicating carbonate recrystallization. Kastner also worked vigorously on phosphate deposits, her work included a revision of the stability of P-O bonds in apatite and phosphate ions, after the revision there was a recalculation of the ocean residence time of phosphorus.[9] Her research focuses on the geochemistry of fluid work interactions, mostly with ocean chemistry. This encompasses the significance to marine minerals - what can be gain knowledge and understanding of how the Earth works. Gas hydrate research has interested Kastner and many fellow geo-scientists due to both its possible contribution to global warming, and as a potential energy source provided as a result of the amount of methane found in these oceanic hydrates. By studying these marine events, Kastner has stated that this can allow for people to be better prepared to predict global warming and have the possibility of avoiding sudden climatic response to anthropogenic perturbations.[10]

• Guggenheim Fellow (1982)[13]
• Charles R. Bennett Service through Chemistry Award, American Chemical Society (1984)[14]
• Ocean Science Education Award, Office of Naval Research (1991)[15]
• Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (1993)[16]
• Fellow, American Geophysical Union (1997)[17]
• Fellow, Geochemical Society and European Association of Geochemistry (1998)[18]
• Hans Petterson Medal, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (1999)[15]
• Fellow, Geological Society of America (2004)[19]
• Maurice Ewing Medal, American Geophysical Union (2008)[20]
• Fellow, International Association of GeoChemistry (2010)[21]
• Francis Shepard Medal for Excellence in Marine Geology, Society for Sedimentary Geology (2011)[22]
• V. M. Goldshmidt Award, Geochemical Society (2015)[23]