2019 – Eiji Ohtani
Emeritus Professor at the Department of Earth and Planetary Materials Science, Graduate School of Science, Tohoku University, Sendai.
Eiji Ohtani was the first person to perform melting experiments on mantle minerals and rocks at pressures equivalent to those of the uppermost lower mantle by developing multi-anvil technology in late 1970s. He also invented techniques to measure density changes in molten rocks under very high pressures, thereby constraining the density contrasts between magmas and residual minerals in the deep mantle, which led to the concept of the deep magma ocean in the early Earth. He pioneered determinations of the stability of hydrous minerals in the mantle and subducting slabs, and the solubility of hydrogen in nominally anhydrous minerals.
He also determined the phase and melting relations of the iron with light elements and metal-silicate partitioning under the pressure and temperature conditions of the Earth’s core to show that both O and Si can be candidates for the light elements in the outer core.
Read the article in Elements