Ikuo Kushiro

Ikuo Kushiro is a Japanese petrologist born March 30, 1934, in Osaka Prefecture, Japan, who specializes in experimental petrology and became a professor at the University of Tokyo in 1974, also working at the Carnegie Institution Geophysical Laboratory, Okayama University Institute for Study of the Earth Interior, and the Institute for Frontier Research on Earth Evolution. His experimental studies on peridotites illuminated magma formation at mid ocean ridges and island arcs, he identified phlogopite and potassium richterite as crucial minerals recycling water into the interior of Earth, he examined Apollo 11 moon rock samples in 1969, and he researched partial melting of the mantle and basaltic magma composition. He was elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 1976, received the Japan Academy Prize in 1982, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1983, received the Harry H. Hess Medal and the Roebling Medal in 1999, the V. M. Goldschmidt Award in 2001, the Wollaston Medal in 2003, the Order of the Sacred Treasure Second Class in 2009, and had the mineral kushiroite named in his honor in 2009.