Institutions Stanford University Notable award Roebling Medal (2015) | Notable awards Roebling Medal (2015) | |
 | ||
Born September 20, 1946 (age 70)
Abilene, Texas ( 1946-09-20 ) Alma mater Stanford University
Texas Christian University Education Stanford University (1974) Awards Guggenheim Fellowship for Natural Sciences, US & Canada Fields Mineralogy, Crystallography | ||
Rodney Charles Ewing (born September 20, 1946) is an American mineralogist and materials scientist whose research is focused on the properties of nuclear materials. He is the Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, a Senior Fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a Professor in the School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences at Stanford University. Ewing also currently serves on the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
Contents
Biography and education
Born in Abilene, Texas, Ewing attended Texas Christian University (B.S., 1968, summa cum laude) and graduate school at Stanford University (M.S., 1972; Ph.D., 1974). From 1969 to 1970, he served in the U.S. Army as a Vietnamese interpreter attached to the 25th Infantry Division.
Career
Ewing began his academic career as an Assistant Professor at the University of New Mexico (1974) rising to the rank of Regents’ Professor of Earth & Planetary Sciences in 1993. From 1997 to 2013, he was a professor at the University of Michigan in three Departments: Earth & Environmental Sciences, Nuclear Engineering & Radiological Sciences, and Materials Science & Engineering. In 2009, he was appointed as the Edward H. Kraus University Professor at the University of Michigan. In 2014, he joined Stanford University as a Senior Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and as a Professor in the School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences. He is presently the Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security.
Research
His early research focused on an esoteric group of minerals, metamictization Nb-Ta-Ti oxides that are unusual because they have become amorphous due to radiation damage caused by the presence of radioactive decay elements. Over the past forty years, the early study of these unusual minerals has blossomed into a broadly based research program on radiation effects in complex ceramic materials. This has led to the development of techniques to predict the long-term behavior of materials, such as those used in radioactive waste disposal. He is the author or co-author of over 700 research publications and the editor or co-editor of 18 monographs, proceedings volumes or special issues of journals. He has published widely in mineralogy, geochemistry, materials science, nuclear materials, physics and chemistry in over 100 different ISI journals. He has been granted a patent for the development of a highly durable material for the immobilization of plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons. He is a Founding Editor of the magazine, Elements, which is now supported by 17 earth science societies. He is a Principal Editor for Nano LIFE, an interdisciplinary journal focused on collaboration between physical and medical scientists. In 2014, he was appointed as one of the Founding Executive Editors of Geochemical Perspective Letters and to the Editorial Board of Applied Physics Reviews.
Honors
Ewing has received the Hawley Medal of the Mineralogical Association of Canada in 1997 and 2002, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002, the Dana Medal of the Mineralogical Society of America in 2006, the Lomonosov Gold Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2006, a Honorary Doctorate from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in 2007, the Roebling Medal of the Mineralogical Society of America in 2015, the Ian Campbell Medal of the American Geoscience Institute in 2015 and the Medal of Excellence from the International Mineralogical Association in 2015. He is a foreign Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and is a fellow of the Geological Society of America, Mineralogical Society of America, Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland (honorary), American Geophysical Union, Geochemical Society and European Association of Geochemistry, American Ceramic Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Materials Research Society.
He has been a member of program committees for the symposium on the Scientific Basis for Nuclear Waste Management held in ten different countries over the past 40 years. He is co-editor of and a contributing author of Radioactive Waste Forms for the Future (North-Holland Physics, Amsterdam, 1988) and Uncertainty Underground—Yucca Mountain and the Nation’s High-Level Nuclear Waste (MIT Press, 2006). Professor Ewing has served on eleven National Research Council committees for the National Academy of Sciences that have reviewed issues related to nuclear waste and nuclear weapons. In 2008, he was a technical cooperation expert for the IAEA at the Comissão Nacional de Energia Nuclear in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In 2014, he was reappointed by Barack Obama to serve as the Chair of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, which is responsible for ongoing and integrated technical review of DOE activities related to transporting, packaging, storing and disposing of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste.
He has been president of the Mineralogical Society of America (2002) and the International Union of Materials Research Societies (1997–1998). Ewing has served on the Board of Directors of the Geochemical Society (2012–2015), the Board of Governors of the Gemological Institute of America (2006–2015) and the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (2012–2015).