Planetary Science Institute Senior Scientist Darby Dyar was presented the 2025 Roebling Medal by the Mineralogy Society of America.
“Dyar is internationally renowned for exceptional contributions to research in mineralogy and igneous and metamorphic petrology, for developing pioneering analysis techniques, and for the extraordinary impact her work has had on both the terrestrial and planetary mineralogy communities,” said SETI Institute Research Scientist Janice Bishop, who nominated her for the award.
The Roebling Medal is the highest award of the Mineralogical Society of America for scientific eminence as represented primarily by scientific publication of outstanding original research in mineralogy. Dyar was selected for the Roebling Medal for her groundbreaking advances in mineralogy that have vastly furthered our understanding of geologic processes on the Earth, Moon, Mars and Venus.
The award was presented at the 2025 Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America (GSA), held this month in San Antonio, Texas.
“Forty-four years ago, I attended my first GSA meeting, and my first awards luncheon for the Mineralogical Society of America. When the medal was awarded to Robert Garrells, my Ph.D. advisor Roger Burns leaned over and whispered in my ear, ‘that will be you up there someday, Darby.’ Receiving this award validates the faith he had in me all those years ago, and makes the years of hard work worth it,” Dyar said. “As the first Roebling idealist to have been denied tenure, taken seven years off when her children were young, and spent the majority of her career at an undergraduate-only institution, this award recognizes that there are truly no obstacles that can’t be overcome with a passion for understanding how things work, a commitment to working hard, and respect for the valuable contributions that can come from working with the next generation of scientists.”
Dyar earned her bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College and her doctoral degree in geochemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is a mineralogist and spectroscopist interested in a wide range of problems relating to the evolution of the Solar System. Dyar has pioneered use of machine learning tools to interpret spectroscopic data.
Dyar’s honors and awards include the Outstanding Service Award from the Mineralogical Society of America in 1991, the 2016 G.K. Gilbert Award for outstanding contributions to planetary science from the Geological Society of America, the 2017 Hawley Medal from the Mineralogical Association of Canada and the 2018 Eugene Shoemaker Distinguished Scientist Medal from NASA. She was also named as a Helmholtz International Fellow by the Helmholtz Association in 2018 and was honored with the Wellesley College Alumnae Achievement Award in 2020. She became a Fellow of the Mineralogical Society of America in 1995, the Geological Society of America in 2017 and the Geochemical Society in 2019.
Dyar is also a Kennedy-Schelkunoff Professor of Astronomy at Mount Holyoke College and a member of the Graduate Faculty at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Massachusetts.