Houtermans Award (EAG)
The Houtermans award is bestowed annually to a scientist no more than 35 years of age or within 6 years of their PhD (eligibility is determined by the status of the candidate at the close of the year in which nominations are received and not the year the award is presented) for a single exceptional contribution to geochemistry, published as a single paper or a series of papers on a single topic. It is named in honor of Friedrich Georg Houtermans, a Dutch-Austrian-German physicist.
Awarded to: Katharine Hendry View recipient's web page
Citationist: Daniel Conley
Abstract: Isotopes in Spicules: Delving into Deep-Sea Archives of Marine Silicon Cycling
Medal lecture in:
Session 12d in 414+415 on Thursday 30th June 00:45 - 01:30
Citation: Kate Hendry is a Royal Society University Research Fellow in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol. She received her MSci in Natural Sciences from Queens’ College, University of Cambridge, in 2004, before carrying out her DPhil in Antarctic Biogeochemistry at Oxford University with Ros Rickaby. After eighteen months of postdoctoral research in Oxford, she was awarded a Doherty postdoctoral scholarship in 2009 to work in the Department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (with Laura Robinson, Olivier Rouxel and Tim Eglinton). In 2010, she published her first paper on silicon isotopes in biogenic opal, and was awarded a National Science Foundation Geology and Geophysics grant to continue this research as a co-investigator at WHOI. Since returning to the UK, initially as a Research Lecturer at Cardiff University before moving to Bristol, she has been awarded research grants from the Leverhulme Trust, the Natural Environment Research Council, the Royal Society and the European Research Council to continue her work on silicon isotopes, as well as trace metals and their isotopes. Kate has been developing the use of silicon isotopes in deep-sea siliceous sponges in biomineralisation and palaeoceanographic studies since 2008. Her calibration work is based largely on sponge samples she collected on three oceanographic research cruises to Southern Ocean and Equatorial Atlantic. She has also worked with her colleagues on producing some of the first silicon isotope geochemical archives using sponge spicules from deep sea sediment cores to reconstruct past changes in oceanic silicon cycling. Her palaeoclimate work has focused on understanding changes in silicon cycling over the last deglaciation, working with Jerry McManus, Jim Hays, and Mark Brzezinski amongst others. She has worked in deeper geological time with Alex Halliday and colleagues, on coupled Southern Ocean diatom-sponge opal records from the Eocene-Oligocene boundary. Her current work includes understanding the links between biochemistry and isotope geochemistry in silicifiers on the microscopic scale, to the large scale spatial distribution of silicon and silicon isotopes in modern and past oceans.