Category: Robert Hazen

Aired January 13, 2016 on PBS, “Life’s Rocky Start” featuring Professor Hazen investigates the secret link between rocks and minerals, and every living thing on Earth.

Read the program description below and watch it here:

“Four and a half billion years ago, the young Earth was a hellish place—a seething chaos of meteorite impacts, volcanoes belching noxious gases, and lightning flashing through a thin, torrid atmosphere. Then, in a process that has puzzled scientists for decades, life emerged. But how? NOVA joins mineralogist Robert Hazen as he journeys around the globe. From an ancient Moroccan market to the Australian Outback, he advances a startling and counterintuitive idea—that the rocks beneath our feet were not only essential to jump-starting life, but that microbial life helped give birth to hundreds of minerals we know and depend on today. It’s a theory of the co-evolution of Earth and life that is reshaping the grand-narrative of our planet’s story. “

The Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO), led by Robinson Professor of Earth Sciences Robert Hazen, has released a landmark book recounting their findings over the past three years and their plans for the future.  The DCO is a 10-year, $500 million project investigating Earth’s deep carbon cycle.  The book was released open access online as part of the series Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry.  Professor Hazen was the lead editor of this volume.  To read media coverage about the book, click here, here, here and here.

Professor Hazen was awarded the Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award on February 16, 2012. Professor Hazen has been teaching at George Mason since 1990. While at GMU, Professor Hazen has worked with fellow Robinson Professor, James Trefil, developing a curricula dedicated to teaching scientific literacy. He teaches courses on symmetry in art and science, on images of the scientist in popular culture, and on scientific ethics. Professor Hazen has also developed two video courses, The Joy of Science and The Origins of Life.

Robinson Professor Robert Hazen did an interview for NPR which aired on November 11th, 2010. He spoke about the “coevolution of life and rocks.” Click here to listen to the interview.

Robert Hazen, Robinson Professor of Earth Sciences, presented the opening keynote address, “Mineralogical Co-Evolution of the Geo- and Biospheres,” at the quadrennial meeting of the International Mineralogical Association in Budapest, Hungary.