Susan W. Kieffer

Susan W. Kieffer is an American physical geologist and planetary scientist, born in 1942, Emeritus Professor of Geology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign after teaching positions at UCLA, the United States Geological Survey, Arizona State University and the University of British Columbia, known for research on the fluid dynamics of volcanoes, geysers and rivers and for her model of the thermodynamic properties of complex minerals, along with contributions to understanding meteorite impacts. She held a MacArthur Fellowship from 1995 to 2000, later received the Marcus Milling Legendary Geoscientist Medal in 2017, and wrote the 2013 trade book The Dynamics of Disaster examining natural disasters through a geological lens. She received the Penrose Medal in 2014.