Ernst K. Zinner

Ernst Kunibert Zinner (30 January 1937 – 30 July 2015) was an astrophysicist.

Zinner was born on 30 January 1937 at Sankt Peter in der Au, Austria, a small town about 100 miles west of Vienna. Although his father, Kunibert Zinner, was a renowned sculptor, he was more interested in nature and science as a boy. Zinner had four younger siblings, and relatives in Austria. He was married to Brigitte Wopenka; they had a son, Max Giacobini Zinner, who lives in New York City.

He obtained an undergraduate degree in physics from the Vienna University of Technology and, in the mid-1960s, moved to St. Louis to attend Washington University. He earned his Ph.D. there in 1972 in high energy physics. He then held positions at:

• Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (1980)
• Vienna University of Technology (1980-82)
• University of Pavia (1989)
• University of Bern (1994)
• Australian National University (1995)
• Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (2001, 03, 04)
• National Museum of Natural History (France) (2006)
• Carnegie Institution for Science (2010)
• University of Perugia (2011)
• University of Granada (2013)

He subsequently joined the Laboratory for Space Sciences, part of the McDonnell Center for Space Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. He remained there the rest of his career, eventually becoming a Research Professor of Physics and Earth and Planetary Sciences, and retired early in 2015.

He was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union and Sigma Xi. He was also a fellow of the American Physical Society, the Meteoritical Society, the Geochemical Society and the European Association of Geochemistry.

Zinner had Mantle Cell Lymphoma for the last 19 years of his life. He died on 30 July 2015 at the age of 78.

After his death, an "Ernst Zinner Scholarship Fund" was established to support cello students at Webster University.

Zinner's PhD research was in high energy physics. He subsequently studied the effects that the environment within our solar system would have on the moon and the parent bodies of meteors, using nuclear particle tracks, micrometeoid craters, and elements in the solar wind. His later research was focused on the information contained in presolar grains carried by early meteorites. These grains were formed in atmospheres and explosions of stars outside of our solar system, and they can provide information about the history of stellar nucleosynthesis and the formation of the solar system.

He was instrumental in identifying for the first time material in meteorites that pre-dated the formation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago. Zinner and his colleagues found minute amounts of stardust - diamond and silicon carbide - that originated outside the solar system.

Identification of these grains involved a measurement technique called secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS). Zinner was widely considered one of the leading authorities on the instrument, and he trained scientists worldwide in its use. The work led to the emergence of a new field of study, the laboratory analysis of stardust, which opened up new insights into the evolution of stars and nucleosynthesis of the elements.

His research has involved Ion microprobe analysis since 1974. He has worked with the Cameca IMS 3f instrument since 1982, and the Cameca NanoSIMS instrument since 2000. He led the Long Duration Exposure Facility.

• 1987 Antarctic Service Medal, National Science Foundation
• 1997 J. Lawrence Smith Medal, National Academy of Sciences
• 1997 Leonard Medal of the Meteoritical Society
• 2010 Merle A. Tuve Fellow of the Carnegie Institution of Washington
• 2011 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

• ^