Grotzinger began his professorship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1988, where he still teaches today. As the Shrock Professor of Earth Sciences and Director of the Earth Resources Laboratory, his work at M.I.T. includes field-based outcrop studies of reservoir-scale heterogeneity, numerical simulation of microbial growth processes, regional mapping of subsurface data to evaluate biogeochemical events at the Precambrian-Cambrian boundary, and robotic investigations of the surface geology of Mars.
Grotzinger has researched and investigated the spontaneous burst of life that spawned the early ancestors of all animals, otherwise known as the Cambrian Explosion, which remains one of the most debated and mysterious topics in evolutionary biology. About 540 million years ago, a community of organisms developed at the bottom of the ocean which represent all the major groups of animals on earth today. The cause of this explosion has yet to be determined, but an early 1990's discovery of a fossil in Namibia by Grotzinger has led scientists to re-define the time frame of animal and human evolution. In 2001, Grotzinger traveled to Oman to find fossils and geologic evidence to support his theory on the reclassification of the time periods. He and his team found that the Cambrian Explosion may have been the result of a mammoth environmental event in which even the oceans became anoxic.
A spinoff of Grotzinger's work in the Cambrian and Precambrian eras has application to the petroleum industry. Using Grotzinger's groundbreaking techniques, scientists are now better able to determine the location of oil and gas reserves in rocks and sediments of old age, which had been previously regarded as uneconomic.
Grotzinger has recently applied his theories of evolution to the study of Mars. He says: "One sign of life found on the early Earth which may exist on Mars is stromatolites, common sedimentary structures from the seafloor of the early Earth which may have been created by life. Such stromatolites would be easier to find than microfossils. However, stromatolites can also be formed by inorganic processes, which makes finding a way to determine the origin of these features an important step before they can be used to identify a past life." Now Grotzinger is developing digital mapping techniques that will allow him and his colleagues to study Martian geology for signs of life. In 2002, Grotzinger was one of only 28 scientists chosen by NASA to participate in the 2003 Mars Exploration Rover Mission during which he will perform an analysis of Martian sediments and sedimentary rocks.
In 2002, Grotzinger was elected into the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors that can be accorded a U.S. scientist. He has also been awarded the National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award, the Fred Donath Medal from the Geological Society of America, and the Henno Martin Medal from the Geological Society of Namibia.
Contribution: Director of the Earth Resources Laboratory at MIT, Expert on Evolution on Earth, Member of NASA Mars Team
Hometown: Dover, Mass.
College Activities: Theta Delta Chi, Lacrosse
Major: Geoscience
Other Education: University of Montana, Missoula, Mont. (M.S., 1981), Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Va. (Ph.D., 1985)