Andrew M. Davis (born 1950) is an Americanmeteoriticist and professor ofastronomy andgeoscience at theUniversity of Chicago.[1][2] He is the son of Americanchemist andphysicistRaymond Davis Jr., aNobel Prize in Physicslaureate. His main field of study is the origin of the elements bystellar nucleosynthesis. He currently is the head of a project to build a new instrument called the ion nanoprobe, which will allow isotopic and chemical analysis at finer scales than any contemporary instrument. He is also studying the cometary dust and contemporary interstellar dust returned to Earth by theStardust spacecraft in 2006. In 2018, he was madeFellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.[3]
He is conducting research about the isotopic compositions of refractory inclusions inmeteorites to understand the earliest history of theSolar System. Short-lived chronometers such as the 26Al-26Mg system can resolve time differences of only a few tens of thousands of years for events that occurred 4.55 billion years ago. Isotopic fractionation effects and the relative abundances of trace elements are used to constrain thermal histories and redox conditions in thesolar nebula and on the asteroidal parent bodies of meteorites.
Tiny (<10 μm in diameter) grains ofsilicon carbide,graphite, and otherrefractory minerals and rocks condensed around dying stars (mostlyred giant stars andsupernovae) survived potentially destructive processes in the interstellar medium and during solar system formation, and can now be found in meteorites. These grains preserve an isotopic record of the nucleosynthesis in individual stars. He is measuring the isotopic compositions of these grains with a new technique, resonant ionization mass spectrometry, that was developed by his collaborators atArgonne National Laboratory.
Asteroid6947 Andrewdavis, discovered bySchelte Bus during theU.K. Schmidt–Caltech Asteroid Survey in 1981, was named after him.[2] The officialnaming citation was published by theMinor Planet Center on 9 August 2006 (M.P.C. 57420).[4]
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