Ernst Zinner
The physicist who measured single grains of stardust inside meteorites, showing which kinds of stars made them.
Key facts
- Born
- 1937
- Died
- 2015
- Nationality
- Austrian-born American
- Field
- Physicist
Ernst K. Zinner was born in Austria, trained as a physicist and worked for many years at Washington University in St Louis, where he became a pioneer of the ion microprobe. This instrument fires a fine beam of ions at a sample and measures the isotopes knocked out of it, so it can analyse a spot only a few millionths of a metre across.
When Edward Anders's group discovered presolar grains in meteorites in 1987, Zinner's instrument made it possible to study them one at a time. Each grain carries the isotopic fingerprint of the star in which it formed, very different from anything made in the Solar System. Zinner and his colleagues showed that most silicon carbide grains came from carbon-rich red giant stars, while others formed in the debris of supernova explosions.
Over his career Zinner measured thousands of presolar grains of silicon carbide, graphite, oxides and silicates, turning meteorites into samples of dozens of different stars. His work let astronomers test their models of how stars make elements using real material in the laboratory.
Zinner was awarded the Leonard Medal of the Meteoritical Society, and he trained many of the scientists who continue the work today.