Rate My Professor Nicolas Dauphas

Nicolas Dauphas is a planetary scientist and geochemist serving as Professor and Chair of Cosmochemistry in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of Hong Kong. He received his B.Sc. from the École Nationale Supérieure de Géologie in 1998, M.Sc. from the Centre de Recherches Pétrographiques et Géochimiques and the National Polytechnic Institute of Lorraine in 1998, and Ph.D. in geochemistry and cosmochemistry from the National Polytechnic Institute of Lorraine in 2002 under advisors Bernard Marty and Laurie Reisberg. Dauphas conducted postdoctoral research at the Enrico Fermi Institute of the University of Chicago and the Field Museum of Natural History from 2002 to 2004. He then joined the faculty of the Department of the Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago in 2004, advancing to the Louis Block Professorship in 2016, where he founded the Origins Laboratory and served until 2025. His distinguished career includes major awards such as the Nier Prize from the Meteoritical Society (2005), David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship (2007), Houtermans Award from the European Association of Geochemistry (2008), James B. Macelwane Medal and Fellowship from the American Geophysical Union (2011), Fellowship of the Meteoritical Society (2014), finalist for the Blavatnik National Awards (2017), Geochemical Fellowship from the Geochemical Society and European Association of Geochemistry (2019), and election to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (2024).

Dauphas investigates the origin and evolution of the solar system and planetary environments through high-precision mass spectrometry, synchrotron techniques including nuclear resonant inelastic X-ray scattering, laboratory experiments, and theoretical modeling. Key discoveries encompass establishing the radiometric age of the Galaxy, demonstrating that Mars is a stranded planetary embryo, showing that Earth and Moon share nearly identical isotopic compositions which challenges traditional models of lunar formation, identifying supernova-derived nanospinels as carriers of isotopic anomalies in extraterrestrial materials, tracing the felsic nature of Earth’s continental crust back 3.5 billion years, and advancing understanding of the iron biogeochemical cycle. He has authored over 200 papers, serves on the Board of Reviewing Editors for Science, and contributes to sample return missions such as Hayabusa2 and MMX. His contributions have significantly shaped the fields of cosmochemistry and planetary science.