Victor Grokhovskiy, head of the UrFU Extra Terra Consortium Laboratory, won the Service Award from The Meteoritical Society, an international scientific non-profit organization. A total of five scientists, three from the USA, as well as representatives from Russia and Germany, were selected by the jury this year. The nominees were announced following the results of the congress in Frankfurt. The awards will be presented to the winners in 2027 at the next convention in Arizona.
"The Service Award is awarded for contributions to work with extraterrestrial material – lunar soil, meteorites. Victor Grokhovskiy has made a huge contribution to the development of meteoritics; this is a well‑deserved award. And the fact that he has become a laureate means that the results of his work and those of our laboratory are recognized at the global level: today, five out of eight Russian members of the Meteoritical Society are employees of our laboratory," notes Evgenia Petrova, Associate Professor at the Department of Physical Methods and Quality Control Instruments at Ural Federal University.
Since the Meteorite Society began awarding the prize in 1966, Victor Grokhovskiy has become the fifth Russian laureate and the first in the Service Award (service to the cause) category. This category recognizes achievements not only in the scientific field but also in education and outreach.
It should be noted that Victor Grokhovskiy is a professor at the Institute of Physics and Technology at UrFU and the head of the university’s meteorite expeditions. Among his scientific interests are phase and structural transformations in matter of extraterrestrial origin (meteorites, lunar soil, cosmic dust) and protoplanetary matter in primitive meteorites. He also studies issues related to asteroid safety. In 2013, the professor was included in the list of the ten most notable people in the world according to Nature magazine: the scientist was involved in organizing research on the meteorite that fell in the Chelyabinsk region in February 2013. In 2014, asteroid 16399 was named after Grokhovskiy. In 2019, a new mineral, grokhovskyite, was named after the professor.
Reference
The Meteoritical Society is an international organization that promotes research and education in the field of planetary science, with a particular focus on the study of meteorites and other extraterrestrial materials. These studies help expand our understanding of the origin of the Solar System. The society was founded in 1933. Today, the organization includes scientists from more than 50 countries. Victor Grokhovskiy has been a member of the Meteoritical Society since 1984.
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