Professor Russell J. Hemley’s research explores the chemistry of materials over a broad range of thermodynamic conditions from low to very high pressures with application to condensed matter physics, earth and planetary sciences, and materials science. His accomplishments include discoveries of new phenomena in dense hydrogen at megabar pressures. He is also a world leader in the continued development of high-pressure techniques.

He received his BA from Wesleyan University (1977) and did his graduate work in physical chemistry at Harvard University (MA, 1980; PhD, 1983). After a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard (1983-84), he joined the Geophysical Laboratory at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, as a Carnegie Fellow (1984-86) and Research Associate (1986-87). He became a Staff Scientist in 1987 and in 2007 he became Director of the Geophysical Laboratory. He has been a visiting Professor at the Johns Hopkins University (1991-92) and at the Ecole Normale Superieure, Lyon (1996).

Dr. Hemley is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences (2001). He was the recipient of the Mineralogical Society of America Award (1990), the Balzan Prize in Mineral Physics (2005), and the Percy W. Bridgman award (2009). He is a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2008) and Honoris Causa Professor of the Russian Academy of Sciences (2008). He is the author of over 580 publications.