Citation by Janice Bishop
I am delighted and honored to provide a citation for Dr. Scott L. Murchie, the 2025 recipient of GSA’s Grove Karl Gilbert Award from the Planetary Geology Division. Scott is recognized with the Gilbert Award for revolutionizing our understanding of Mars and conducting ground-breaking science discoveries at Ganymede, near-earth asteroids, and Mercury. His leadership on planetary missions is renowned for folding together innovative ideas, welcoming perspectives from multiple scientific backgrounds, and including early career scientists to achieve revolutionary and influential discoveries throughout our Solar System.
Scott’s academic journey began at Colby College and continued through the University of Minnesota, Brown University, and the Lunar and Planetary Institute before he joined the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. Scott has contributed profound analyses of airless bodies through blending datasets of multiple remote sensing instruments on CONTOUR, NEAR, MESSENGER, and Galileo to characterize Mercury; our Moon; Mars’ moons Phobos and Deimos; the asteroids Gaspra, Eros and Mathilde; and satellites of Jupiter.
Scott also focused his attention on the geologically more complex planet Mars through participation on the PHOBOS-2 and Mars Pathfinder missions in the 1990’s, where he gained an appreciation for surface alteration on Mars. His extensive imaging camera and spectrometer experience drew him to conceive the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) instrument that flew on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Scott’s prescient hypothesis that Mars contains phyllosilicates, sulfates, carbonates, and other products of aqueous alteration and his leadership in developing the CRISM instrument to characterize and map these minerals from 0.4-4 µm at a scale of tens of meters has led to a total revamping of our understanding of the red planet. He has emphasized the importance of sharing the wealth of CRISM’s data to the scientific community and gleefully shared statistics on the multitude of community publications arising from data produced by the CRISM instrument.
Dr. Scott Murchie is a truly exceptional recipient of the Gilbert Award. His research, mission activities, and scientific leadership have enabled significant strides in understanding multiple bodies throughout our Solar System with more to come in the near future on Europa Clipper and Dragonfly.
Response by Scott Murchie
Thank you Janice. I'm incredibly grateful for the honor of receiving the Gilbert award. No one receiving such an honor earns it on their own. Starting in graduate school my Brown University faculty mentors provided great opportunities and critical lessons. My advisor Jim Head always put his students in front of an audience, and gave then the chance to be seen and recognized by senior colleagues. And he taught me that if you wanted to understand the geology of some body, then map it. Carle Pieters opened my eyes to the power of remote sensing and how, in that discipline, accurate calibration is everything. Jim provided an on-ramp to participate in the Phobos 2 mission where I could put both of their lessons to work and begin a practice of using complementary data sets to address a problem, like the geology and composition of Mars and Phobos.
That opportunity led to a next one, the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission, where I learned about asteroids and team leadership from Joe Veverka, and imaging from Mark Robinson. Imaging and reflectance spectroscopy revealed much about regolith processes and space weathering but couldn't solve the question of Eros's relationship to meteorites. That took nuclear spectroscopy, particularly gamma ray spectroscopy from close proximity to measure abundances of elements. A detailed analysis completed by my APL colleague Patrick Peplowski showed that at least this S-type asteroid was consistent with the most common type of meteorite, ordinary chondrite.
NEAR also taught me about instrumentation, under the mentorship of APL engineers including Rob Gold, Ed Hawkins, Jeff Warren, Hugo Darlington, and Kevin Heffernan. That knowledge took me back to Mars, to pursue a concept some of us developed in the late 1990's for the next step in unraveling the geologic and climatic history recorded by Martian surface composition. That concept became CRISM, which reunited me with many colleagues who also hailed from Brown: Janice and Jack Mustard, with their expertise on Mars and spectral analysis, Ray Arvidson who has no end to the lessons he's taught me including merging orbital and landed data, and critically, the many incredible students and postdocs who work under them and other CRISM team members.
In parallel with CRISM I had the privilege of working on the MESSENGER mission, which revealed a planet Mercury unlike anything we could have imagined. Understanding the meaning of its muted spectral variations required merging imaging—in which Mark and his former student Brett Denevi and Brown alum Carolyn Ernst played large roles, UV spectroscopy working with Brown alum Noam Izenberg, and—again—gamma-ray and neutron spectroscopy and Patrick's talents at interpreting those data. Mercury proved—against expectations—to be extraordinarily rich in carbon and volatiles.
Most of all I'm grateful to my family who keep me centered on what's really important. My wife Kim, who is here today, is one of the nicest people I know and the love of my life. My daughter Andrea, an outstanding artist, has been at the center of my universe for 31 years. Friends, colleagues, Kim and Andrea, thank you for your support and for being here today.