Philipp Heck

Bio:

Philipp Heck currently serves as the Interim Director of Research at the Field Museum of Natural History. He is also a Professor (part-time) at the University of Chicago where he collaborates with colleagues, advises graduate and undergraduate students, and teaches a course in planetary science.

Heck joined the Field Museum in March 2010 from the University of Chicago, where he was a postdoctoral scholar working on new analytical techniques for presolar grains. He obtained his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees at ETH Zurich in Switzerland in geo- and cosmochemistry. He then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Max-Planck-Institute for Chemistry where he studied the first comet dust brought back from Comet Wild-2 by NASA’s Stardust mission, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he worked mainly on fossil meteorites and banded iron formations from around the world, and at the University of Chicago as part of the CHILI Lab (2009-2010). For his studies he uses specialized analytical techniques such as secondary ion mass spectrometry (NanoSIMS, IMS-1280 and TOF-SIMS), noble gas mass spectrometry, atom probe tomography, scanning electron microscopy, and electron microprobe analysis. Sample preparation for atom-probe work is performed with focused ion beam workstations.

(Source: Pritzker Center)

Research Interests:

Cosmochemistry

Philipp Heck's research addresses the fundamental question about our cosmic origins. What are our origins? To help to answer this question he study the chemical and isotopic compositions of extraterrestrial and terrestrial materials. He and his collaborators study a wide range of samples. These include cosmic dust recovered from Earth's sedimentary record, presolar stardust that is older than the Sun, comet dust, minerals from the early solar system and the moon, and meteorites.

Heck's research currently focuses on presolar grains to understand our parent stars and the history of our Galaxy, early solar system materials and on the delivery history of extraterrestrial matter to Earth. For his research he studies the mineralogy and geochemistry of meteorites, micrometeorites and space-mission returned samples and also of fossil meteorites and micrometeorites found in Earth's sedimentary record. Heck was a member of the international research consortium to find and study the first modern interstellar dust returned by NASA's Stardust Mission.

As the curator in charge, Philipp R. Heck oversees the collection of meteorites at the recently established Robert A. Pritzker Center for Meteoritics and Polar Studies, the largest meteorite collection housed at a private institution with more than 12000 specimens and more than 1600 different meteorites. Other responsibilities include the curation of the gem, mineral, rock, and economic geology collections.

(Source: Pritzker Center)

Recent Publications:

• Stephan T., Bloom H. E., Hoppe P., Davis A. M., Korsmeyer J. M., Regula A., Heck P. R., and Amari S. (2022) Molybdenum, ruthenium, and barium in presolar silicon carbide and graphite: s-, r-, and p-processes and the role of contamination (abstract). Meteorit. Planet. Sci. 57. [pdf]

• Bloom H. E., Stephan T., Davis A. M., Heck P. R., Hoppe P., Korsmeyer J. M., and Amari S. (2022) s-Process molybdenum, ruthenium, and barium in high-density presolar graphite (abstract). Lunar Planet. Sci. 53, #2624. [pdf]

• Nie N. X., Dauphas N., Alp E. E., Zeng H., Sio C. K., Hu J. Y., Chen X., Aarons S. M., Zhang Z., Tian H.-C., Wang D., Prissel K. B., Greer J., Bi W., Hu Mi. Y., Zhao J., Sharar A., Roskosz M., Teng F.-Z., Krawczynski M. J., Heck P. R., and Spear F. S. (2021) Iron, magnesium, and titanium isotopic fractionations between garnet, ilmenite, fayalite, biotite, and tourmaline: results from NRIXS, ab initio, and study of mineral separates from the Moosilauke metapelite. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 302, 18–45.

• Heck P. R., Greer J., Boesenberg J. S., Bouvier A., Caffee M. W., Cassata W. S., Corrigan C., Davis A. M., Davis D. W., Fries M., Hankey M., Jenniskens P., Schmitt-Kopplin P., Sheu S., Trappitsch R., Velbel M., Weller W., Welten K., Yin Q.-Z., Sanborn M. E., Ziegler K., Rowland D., Verosub K., Zhou Q., Liu Y., Tang G., Li Q. , Li X., and Zajacz Z. The Fall, Recovery, Classification and Initial Characterization of the Hamburg, Michigan H4 Chondrite. Meteoritics & Planetary Science 55, 2341–2359, doi.org/10.1111/maps.13584 (2020).

• Heck P. R., Greer J., Kööp L., Trappitsch R., Gyngard F., Busemann H., Maden C., Ávila JN, Davis A. M., Wieler R. (2020) Lifetimes of interstellar dust from cosmic-ray exposure ages of presolar silicon carbide. PNAS 117, 1884–1889. [html]

• Greer J., Rout S. S., Isheim D., Seidman D. N., Wieler R., & Heck P. R. (2020) Atom-probe tomography of space weathered lunar ilmenite grain surfaces. Meteoritics & Planetary Science 55, 426–440. [html]