Planetary Institute Founder Named 2010 Barringer Medal Winner
William K. Hartmann has been named the 2010 winner of the Meteoritical Society’s Barringer Medal and Award, which recognizes outstanding work in the field of impact cratering.
Hartmann, co-founder of the Tucson-based Planetary Science Institute, is an internationally recognized expert on impact cratering and the evolution of planetary surfaces. Among his many contributions to the field, the Meteoritical Society is honoring his discovery of the Moon’s giant Orientale impact basin, a discovery he made as a graduate student in 1962 under the direction of space sciences pioneer Gerard Kuiper.
The society also is recognizing his development of a system of “isochrons,” which uses the number of impact craters on various Martian geological formations to estimate their age. Hartmann has developed and refined the system during several decades of research at the Planetary Science Institute. As early as 1965, he used the method to correctly predict the age of lunar lava plains to be about 3.5 billion years old. This ag