Dr. Peter Schultz

Pete’s research focuses on impact cratering processes as revealed by laboratory impact experiments, the planetary surface record, and terrestrial ground truth.  His laboratory research has covered a wide range of topics: atmospheric effects on ejecta emplacement, impactor survival, secondary impact processes, antipodal shock effects, high-speed spectroscopy of impact vapor/plasma, impact angle effects (shock propagation, vaporization, target damage, and flow-field evolution), projectile fate after impacts, and crater-scaling relations.  Of particular recent interest has addressed the origin of fluidized ejecta and blast winds around craters on Mars.  Such basic research led to participation in numerous NASA planetary missions including Magellan, Deep Impact, Stardust-NExT, EPOXI, and LCROSS.   He cut his teeth, so to speak, on basic lunar research: floor-fractured craters, beginning/end of volcanism, lunar swirl generation, polar volatile evolution, assessment of the size of impactors, evidence for ongoing lunar tectonic activity, and what caused the difference between the lunar nearside and farside.  The last study proposed that a giant impact on the far side actually caused the concentration of maria on the nearside, i.e., the Man in the Moon.  On Earth, his research has included the discovery of 8 impacts in Argentina, documentation of a witnessed crater-forming impact in Peru in 2007, and studying the effects of a giant cometary airblast across the Atacama Desert, Chile only about 11,500 years ago.  He has published more than 200 papers and authored a book called Moon Morphology.  Most recently, he contributed a chapter to a new book that shares stories about growing up during the dawn of the Space Age (The Space Age Generation).

He received his BA from Carleton College (Northfield, MN) and PhD from the U. Texas-Austin.  He subsequently went to NASA Ames as an NRC postdoctoral researcher, then Staff Scientist at LPI (1976-1984), and finally Professor at Brown University, becoming Emeritus in 2014.  His students have gone to become well-respected scientists across the world.  He served as the Science Coordinator for the NASA Ames Vertical Gun Range from 1980 to 2014 and was the Principle Investigator and Director of both the NASA Rhode Island Space Grant program (1992-2022) and the Northeast Planetary Data Center at Brown (1984-2022).  He has been awarded the Distinguished Scientist Award (Hypervelocity Impact Society), Barringer Medal (Meteoritical Society), Medal of Achievement (National Academy of Sciences of Argentina), Distinguished Alumnae Achievement award (Carleton College), and the G. K. Gilbert Award (Geological Society of America). Asteroid 6952 is named “PeteSchultz.”