Judith McKenzie was a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Faculty of Earth Sciences, Geography and Astronomy from 2008 to 2016. Colleagues and Faculty members remember her as a warm-hearted person with a bright personality and unwaning enthusiasm towards science.
Born 1942 in Pennsylvania, USA, she studied chemistry at the University of Colorado, Boulder and earned her doctorate in July 1976 at the ETH Zurich, where she continued as a senior scientist at the Institute of Geology. After a stay at the University of Florida in Gainesville as associate professor, she returned to ETH in 1987 and was appointed full professor in 1996. She was the first female professor at the Department of Earth Sciences and the tenth female to be appointed full professor at ETH. After her retirement in 2007, she remained an active member of the department, but also served on numerous committees, thankfully also at the Scientific Advisory Board of our Faculty.
Pioneering contributions
Her research concentrated on studies of past climate and environmental change recorded in chemical sediments from both lacustrine and marine systems, with a special focus on the role of microbes on dolomite precipitation. Judy McKenzie has made pioneering contributions to the fields of limnogeology and chemical sedimentology, and she introduced the field of geomicrobiology to the department and curriculum at ETH Zurich. Over the years, she has been very involved in the international Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) in both a research and advisory capacity.
She received numerous awards and has also shared insights on how to improve the diversity of award winners within geosciences. (see EOS-Artikel 2015 co-authored by her).
As her Swiss colleagues write in a detailed and touching obituary published by the ETH Zurich, she was always happy to share her knowledge with the younger generation, her former students and post-doctoral researchers, and served as an important role model and good friend for many of them. She will be greatly missed by the international community. Our thoughts in these trying days are with her family in the US, and with her friends and colleagues.
