Reading Terrestrial Planet Evolution in Isotopes and Element Measurements (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9789402420937)

Aubrey Zerkle is an Earth scientist and astrobiologist at the University of St Andrews. Dr Zerkle's primary interest is in the co-evolution of life with planetary environments over geologic timescales. She uses a multi-disciplinary approach to address this, using stable isotope geochemistry, microbiology, trace element and nutrient analyses, to understand biogeochemical interactions and possible feedbacks in modern and paleo-environments. Her current research centers around three main themes: 1) establishing and evaluating stable isotope biosignatures for microbial activity, on Earth and beyond; 2) examining biogeochemical cycling in extreme environments that act as modern "analogues" to ancient Earth and extraterrestrial systems; and, 3) investigating feedbacks between the geosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere during important transitions in Earth history.

Michel Blanc is an astronomer at IRAP, Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées, Toulouse. He works on the physics of planetary magnetospheres and on the exploration of giant planets systems. He is an Interdisciplinary Scientist on the Cassini mission to Saturn and Titan and a Co-I of the Juno mission to Jupiter. He was also the main proponent to ESA of the Laplace mission concept, which is currently implemented as JUICE. He is the author of about 150 research papers and has edited several ISSI books. He is a member of the Academia Europaea, of the Air and Space Academy and of the International Academy of Astronautics. He was granted the first Cassini medal of the European Geosciences Union.

Hugh O'Neill is an earth scientist whose career has focused on experimental petrology and geochemistry -- the study of the composition of rocks, their minerals, and how they came to form. His work has been crucial in advancing our understanding of how rocky planets form, and how the detailed study of Earth materials can solve large-scale geological problems.

Thorsten Kleine is a planetologist with a focus on cosmochemistry at the Institute for Planetology, University of Münster. His research aims at reconstructing the formation and early evolution of the Solar System and the accretion of the planets. To this end, he mainly uses isotope anomalies in extraterrestrial samples to establish a precise chronology of the early Solar System, to constrain the provenance of planetary building blocks, and to date the accretion and chemical differentiation of terrestrial planets. He is a member of several scientific societies, including the Geochemical Society, Meteoritical Society, and European Association of Geochemistry. He received several awards such as the Nier Prize of the Meteoritical Society (2007) and the Clarke Medal from the Geochemical Society (2010), and has been a Fellow of the Meteoritical Society since 2012. In 2013, he was awarded a Consolidator Grant of the European Research Council (ERC), and since 2020 he is Spokesman of the Collaborative Research Center SFB/Transregios TRR170 "Late Accretion onto Terrestrial Planets".