Photo by Phillip R. Lee, Smithsonian Institution
Elizabeth Cottrell, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, USA
2026 Science Innovation Award medallist – Ted Ringwood Medal
Liz Cottrell is a Research Geologist and Curator in the Department of Mineral Sciences, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, USA. She is best known for her work on mantle processes, most notably those related to mantle redox. Liz received her Bachelor of Science from Brown University (1997) where she learned how to buffer cold seal experiments under the mentorship of Mac Rutherford. With her first passport she flew to Paris as a Fulbright Fellow where she fell in love with France and ran tank experiments with Claude Jaupart. Liz received her PhD (2004) at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, under the mentorship of Dave Walker. Her thesis focused on the behavior of siderophile elements during planetary core formation. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the Geophysical Laboratory, Carnegie Institution, she joined the staff of the Smithsonian (2006).
While at Carnegie, Liz had the good fortune to overlap with Katie Kelley. Liz and Katie applied XANES spectroscopy to quantify the oxidation state of iron in silicate glasses. They upwardly revised the Fe3+/Fe2+ ratio of MORB and elucidated systematic behaviors of Fe3+ during mantle melting and basalt differentiation. They showed that the oxygen fugacity recorded by primitive and minimally degassed basaltic melts correlates with geochemical tracers of subduction influence – a line of inquiry that later flourished under the leadership of their student, Maryjo Brounce.
Liz became interested in the role of ferric iron in petrogenetic processes from melting at mid-ocean ridges to calc-alkaline differentiation. A collaboration with postdoctoral fellow Fred Davis inspired a return to the lab to refine experimental techniques for controlling oxygen fugacity in high pressure experiments and to quantify ferric iron partitioning between minerals and melts. This work proved highly synergistic with projects to understand arc petrogenesis with postdocs Megan Holycross and Michelle Muth and with Liz’s exploration of sea floor peridotites as archives of mantle oxygen fugacity. In collaboration with Jessica Warren, a series of papers led by their student, Suzanne Birner, deciphered mantle processes that have generated orders of magnitude variation in the oxygen fugacity of peridotites, with broad implications for the history of Earth’s interior and atmosphere.
Liz has served on the Geochemical Society’s board of directors and as the president of the Geological Society of Washington. She is a Fellow of the Mineralogical Society of America (2016) and a Geochemistry Fellow of the Geochemical Society and the European Association for Geochemistry (2023). She cherishes her community of mentors, collaborators, postdocs, students, and interns.