The National Science Foundation has selected Naomi Oreskes, an assistant professor of earth sciences and adjunct professor of history, to receive a 1993 Young Investigator Award.
The combination of an annual stipend of $25,000 and a NSF guarantee to match any money Oreskes raises from alumni or other sources will allow her access to $315,000 over the next five years.
"The awards are very competitive and prestigious since recipients can do things that typical grants might not let them do," said James Wright, the program director at the National Science Foundation.
"The nice thing about it is that while most other awards have very specific restrictions about what you can use the money for, this one is fairly open ended," Oreskes said. "I can do whatever I need to do to make my work go well."
The award is the second major honor Oreskes received this year.
In the winter she was the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which will let her spend the next two terms working on a book, "The Rejection of Continental Drift."
According to Oreskes, while geologists resolutely rejected the theory of continental drift when it was developed, 40 years later they rapidly accepted the similar theory of plate tectonics.
Both theories contend that the major features of the earth's surface are created by horizontal motions of the lithosphere, the rocky crust of the earth.
As a historical study of the theory of continental drift, the book will focus specifically on why American geologists were much slower to accept this idea than scientists in other countries.
"The book will argue that given the standards in the U.S. during the 1920s, the idea of continental drift seemed preposterous, even pseudo-scientific," Oreskes said. "The standards in England and other countries were different and so more accommodating to this particular idea."
"This happens because scientists do not live in a vacuum," she continued. "It is always the case that the scientific community has standards that arise out of their historical circumstances."
"We can't understand scientific beliefs unless we understand their historical background," Oreskes added.
The pursuit of answers to basic questions concerning the nature of scientific knowledge has motivated much of Oreskes' academic career.
"I have always been interested in the philosophy of science. I went to college in 1976, right when the first wave of environmentalism hit," Oreskes said.
"I became interested in resource issues because of the Arab oil embargo. I was interested in the contrast between what was being said by the popular media and what I had learned in my classes."
Oreskes also researches and analyzes mineral deposits from around the world to help industries find more efficient ways to recover them.
Her work recently took her to the mountains of El Laco, Chile, where she and a group of students studied local ore deposits.
"We now think that the prevailing opinion about how these ore deposits are formed is wrong," Oreskes said.
While most scientists maintain that iron ores formed as lava flows, Oreskes and her students believe they are fumarolic deposits, formed by gases. They hope their information will soon be included in textbooks.
"One direct benefit is the ability to involve both undergraduate and graduate students in much of this research," Geology Professor Gary Johnson said. "This is clearly a benefit to the teaching and research opportunities of students at Dartmouth."
When Oreskes returns from finishing her book in the spring, she will teach a women's studies course on the history of women in science.
Oreskes is the third member of the department to receive this award since it was established in 1987. Earth Sciences Professor Joel Blume was also selected for a 1993 Young Investigator Award, according to Johnson.
"This is certainly unusual for a department having only 10 faculty members and speaks well for the Dartmouth community in general in reflecting its ability to attract world-class scholars to its teaching and research ranks," Johnson said.
"No other earth science department in the country has this many current recipients of the award," he added.
Two weeks after receiving the Young Investigator Award, Blume was given the more prestigious Presidential Faculty Fellowship, which will earn him a $100,000 stipend a year and matching funds for five years.
Blume will travel to Washington D.C. at the end of this month to formally receive his award and meet with President Bill Clinton's science advisor.
Oreskes joined the Dartmouth faculty in 1990 after earning her Ph.D. at Stanford University and working as a part-time consulting geologist for Western Mining Corporation in North America.
She holds a doctoral degree in geological research and the history of science from Stanford and a bachelor of science degree in mining geology from the University of London.
