John Grotzinger is a geologist specializing in sedimentology, stratigraphy, and geobiology, with research on ancient surface environments on Earth and Mars. His field investigations of sedimentary deposits provide a basis for reconstructing past environments and examining interactions among life, climate, and tectonic processes. He received a bachelor’s degree from Hobart College in 1979, a master’s degree from the University of Montana in 1981, and a PhD in geology from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 1985. After research appointments with the Geological Survey of Canada and Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory, he joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty in 1988 and moved to the California Institute of Technology in 2005. His terrestrial research has addressed the chemical evolution of early oceans and the atmosphere and the environmental setting of early animal evolution. From 2006 to 2015, he served as chief scientist for NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory rover mission. Analyses of mudstones and sedimentary structures observed by Curiosity helped investigate the former rivers and lakes of Gale Crater. His textbook “Understanding Earth,” coauthored with Thomas H. Jordan and translated into Japanese as “Amerikaban Daigaku Chikyu Kagaku no Kyokasho,” connects rocks, volcanoes, earthquakes, plate tectonics, climate, and the water cycle within an interacting Earth system. Alongside explanations of geological phenomena, it examined how geologists use observations and evidence to reconstruct the processes that shaped the planet.
