Edward Anders
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Edward Anders
Edward Anders | |
|---|---|
| Born | June 21, 1926 |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Ph.D., Columbia University, 1954 |
| Known for | |
| Spouse | Joan F. Anders |
| Awards |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Cosmochemistry |
| Institutions | |
Edward Anders (born June 21, 1926) is an emeritus professor of chemistry at the University of Chicago. His major areas of research have included the origin and ages of meteorites, the solar-system abundance of chemical elements, and mass extinctions in earth history.[2] In the 1970s, he was one of the 142 principal investigators who studied lunar samples brought back to Earth by the Apollo program.[3]After retiring from scientific research in 1991, he became a prominent researcher, speaker and writer on issues related to the Holocaust in Latvia.
Early life and education
Anders was born Edward Alperovitch in the Latvian coastal city of Liepaja in 1926. Both his mother (Erica, nee Sheftelovitch-Mairan) and his father (Adolf) were part of a German-speaking Jewish merchant community. In 1940, the Soviet Union occupied Latvia, and in 1941, Latvia was invaded by Nazi Germany. Anders's father was among many Liepaja Jews murdered by the Nazis in the early months of the occupation. Anders and his mother evaded Nazi annihilation by using a variety of altered-identity schemes, until they were able to flee Latvia near the end of World War II.[4][third-party source needed]
After the end of the war, Anders settled in Munich, where he earned a bachelor's degree at UNRRA University, a makeshift institution created by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration solely to serve refugees.[5] In 1949, Anders arrived in New York City, where he embarked on a master's degree in chemistry at Columbia University. He earned a Ph.D. from Columbia in 1954, benefiting from the mentorship of Columbia nuclear-chemistry professor Jack Malcolm Miller.[6]
Career
Anders spent most of his scientific career on the chemistry faculty at the University of Chicago. He arrived as an assistant professor in 1955, gained tenure a few years later and was named the Horace B. Horton Distinguished Service professor in 1973. He spent 1963-64 at the University of Bern as a visiting professor on sabbatical; he returned to the Swiss university for six shorter stays from 1970-1990. His first academic appointment was as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana) from 1954 to 1955.[7]
In 1959, Anders won the Newcomb Cleveland Prize from the Meteoritical Society for his work on meteorites and asteroids.[8] His findings during this period included evidence that meteorites come from the asteroid belt,[9] and an explanation for the ways tiny diamonds could be created in meteorites, without requiring the enormous pressure that could only be found in larger bodies with greater gravitational forces.[10]
In 1973, Anders received the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal, acknowledging his work as a analyzing multiple batches of lunar samples brought back to Earth by the Apollo project. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1974.[11]
In 1988, Anders and colleagues published evidence of catastrophic fires 65 milion years ago, caused by a giant meteorite crash in the Gulf of Mexico. The researchers analyzed silt sediments from sites as far away as Europe and New Zealand. In each case, they found high amounts of iridium, a rare element associated with certain meteorites, and massive amounts of carbon (associated with global fires) in the same layers of strata. "The first year after the impact was a dramatic and dangerous period for life on Earth," Anders told The New York Times. [12]
Holocaust research
In 2003, Anders and co-author Juris Dubrovskis published "Who Died in the Holocaust? Recovering Names From Official Records." Their article, which appeared in Holocaust & Genocide Studies, used Latvian, German, Israeli and other records to document the fate of each of Liepaja's 7,140 Jewish residents during Nazi Germany's occupation. Anders and Dubrovskis established that only 208 survived.[13]
In 2004, Latvia's president, Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga, spoke at the dedication of a Holocaust memorial in Liepāja. She closed by saying: "I want to thank the Liepāja Holocaust Memorial Committee, its chairman Mr. Edward Anders, Mr. Vladimirs Bāns, the authors of the project, and all who lent a hand to make this Memorial become reality."[14]
References
- ^ "appa". history.nasa.gov.
- ^ Marvin, Ursula B. (2001). "Oral Histories in Meteoritics and Planetary Sciences: Edward Anders". Meteoritics & Planetary Science. 36, no. 2: A225–A267.
- ^ Compton, David W. (1989). "Where No Man Has Gone Before: A History of Apollo Lunar Exploration Missions". NASA Special Publication 1214, Chapter 11, section 4, "The First Lunar Science Conference.".
- ^ Anders, Edward (2012). Amidst Latvians During the Holocaust. Riga, Latvia: Occupation Museum Association of Latvia.
- ^ Holian, Anna (May 2008). "Displacement and the Post-War Reconstruction of Education: Displaced Persons at the UNRRA University of Munich, 1945-1948". Contemporary European History. 17, no. 2: 167–195.
- ^ "Jack Miller Teaching Awards". Columbia Chemistry. September 9, 2015. Retrieved October 20, 2019.
- ^ Marvin, Ursula B. (2001). "Oral Histories in Meteoritics and Planetary Sciences: Edward Anders". Meteoritics & Planetary Science. 36, no. 2: A225–A267.
- ^ "Newcomb Cleveland Prize Recipients". American Association for the Advancement of Science.
- ^ "History of Meteorites Studied". New York Times. October 25, 1959.
- ^ Sullivan, Walter (June 11, 1961). "A New Way Found to Make Diamonds". New York Times.
- ^ "Science Academy Elects 96 Members". New York Times. April 28, 1974.
- ^ "Global Fire Is Linked to Dinosaur's Demise". New York Times. August 30, 1988.
- ^ Anders, Edward; Dubrovskis, Juris (Spring 2003). "Who Died in the Holocaust? Recovering Names From Official Records". Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 17, issue 1: 114–138.
- ^ "Memorial Wall – Liepāja Jews in WWII".
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