On July 1st geophysicist Sean Solomon assumed the directorship of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and officially joined the faculty of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences as William B. Ransford Professor of Earth and Planetary Science. Solomon is internationally renowned for his studies of the deep earth and the planets Mercury, Venus, and Mars, and is currently lead PI of NASA's MESSENGER mission to Mercury. He completed his Ph.D. in geophysics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and stayed on as instructor and researcher for two decades. In 1992 he moved to the Carnegie Institution in Washington, DC where he continued his research and served as director.

From 2004 until last year, Solomon served as a member of the Earth Institute's external advisory board, and cites his strong belief in the mission of the Earth Institute as one of the reasons he chose to come to Columbia. Solomon professes to have admired Lamont his whole career and credits some of the early Seismology work done at Columbia in the 1960s as having inspired him to go into geophysics.  The Department welcomes Sean to Columbia and to Lamont!

For more about Sean's impressive career achievements and his appointment to the directorship of Lamont, see the following news items:

Top Planetary Scientist to Lead Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, LDEO News, April 3, 2012.

Geophysicist Sean C. Solomon appointed director of Lamont-Doherty, Columbia Magazine, Summer 2012.