2018 – Gordon E. Brown, Jr
Dorrell William Kirby Professor Emeritus of Geological Sciences and Professor Emeritus of Photon Science at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University.
Gordon Brown has made major contributions to the development of synchrotron radiation-based spectroscopic, scattering, and imaging methods to mineralogical and their application to geochemical problems. He has carried out many pioneering XAS studies of the local structural environments of cations in aluminosilicate minerals, silicate glasses and melts, aqueous solutions, and sorbed at mineral-aqueous solution interfaces, and the first in-situ XPS studies of the reaction of water with mineral surfaces. He has determined the molecular-level speciation of contaminants in mining environments and in soils at nuclear waste sites and the structure and properties of natural and engineered nanoparticles and their transformations in different environments. He has also examined the sequestration of carbon dioxide via mineral carbonation and the chemical reactions of hydraulic fracturing fluids with minerals and natural organic matter in unconventional oil- and gas-containing shales in an effort to improve the efficiency of hydrocarbon recovery and reduce its environmental impact.