The Mineralogical Society of America will award the 2025 Roebling Medal to Planetary Science Institute Senior Scientist Darby Dyar. 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.
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.
“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 awards will be presented at the 2025 Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America, in October of 2025 in San Antonio, Texas. To accompany her medal presentation, there will be an oral session in Dyar’s honor at the upcoming meeting. Papers touching any and all aspects of Darby’s broad career are being requested. (Contact Janice Bishop at [email protected] for more information.)
“Accepting this award puts me in the company of scientists I have revered throughout my career,” Dyar said. “It’s wonderful to be recognized for doing something I have so enjoyed: following my passion for understanding minerals in the broad context of geology. I began my career as a mineralogist, and it’s wonderful to have this recognition 45 years later.”
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.