Published: March 6, 2013

Mifflin Meteorite Results Published in Meteoritics & Planetary Science

Philipp Heck, Sr. Director, Negaunee Integrative Research Center; Robert A. Pritzker Curator for Meteoritics and Polar Studies; Head, Robert A. Pritzker Center, Negaunee Integrative Research Center

The first scientific paper describing the almost local meteorite Mifflin that fell on April 14, 2010 in southwestern Wisconsin got published this week in the peer-reviewed journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science. The Robert A. Pritzker Assistant Curator for Meteoritics and Polar Studies Philipp Heck is a member of the international consortium who studied the space rock and co-author of the study. Pieces of Mifflin are on public display at the Field Museum and are part of the meteorite collection.

The first scientific paper describing the almost local meteorite Mifflin that fell on April 14, 2010 in southwestern Wisconsin got published this week in the peer-reviewed journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science. The Robert A. Pritzker Assistant Curator for Meteoritics and Polar Studies Philipp Heck is a member of the international consortium who studied the space rock and co-author of the study. Pieces of Mifflin are on public display at the Field Museum and are part of the meteorite collection.

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Philipp Heck
Sr. Director, Negaunee Integrative Research Center; Robert A. Pritzker Curator for Meteoritics and Polar Studies; Head, Robert A. Pritzker Center

Philipp R. Heck serves as the Senior Director of Research at the Field Museum. Research at the Field Museum is conducted in the areas of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Life Sciences, Anthropology and Archeology, and is united in the Negaunee Integrative Research Center. Heck is the Robert A. Pritzker Curator of Meteoritics and Polar Studies at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, IL in the Science & Education department and a Professor (part time) at the University of Chicago's Department of the Geophysical Sciences and the College (https://geosci.uchicago.edu/people/philipp-heck/). 

Heck's research focuses on presolar grains to understand our parent stars and the history of our Galaxy, early solar system materials, asteroids, and on the delivery history of extraterrestrial matter to Earth. For his research he studies the mineralogy and geochemistry of meteorites, micrometeorites and space-mission returned samples and also of fossil meteorites and micrometeorites found in Earth's sedimentary record. Heck joined the sample analysis team of NASA's OSIRIS-REx sample return mission. Heck was a member of the international research consortium to find and study the first modern interstellar dust returned by NASA's Stardust Mission. Heck is an executive committee member of the Extraterrestrial Materials Analysis Group (ExMAG) and is chairing the Microparticle Subcommittee.

As the curator in charge, Philipp R. Heck oversees the collection of meteorites at the recently established Robert A. Pritzker Center for Meteoritics and Polar Studies, the largest meteorite collection housed at a private institution with more than 12000 specimens and more than 1600 different meteorites. Other responsibilities include the curation of the gem, mineral, rock and economic geology collections.


Philipp R. Heck came to the Field Museum in March 2010 from the University of Chicago, where he was a postdoctoral scholar working on new analytical techniques for presolar grains. He obtained his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees at ETH Zurich in Switzerland in geo- and cosmochemistry. He then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Max-Planck-Institute for Chemistry where he studied the first comet dust brought back from Comet Wild-2 by NASA’s Stardust Mission and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he worked mainly on fossil meteorites and banded iron formations from around the world. For his studies he uses specialized analytical techniques such as secondary ion mass spectrometry (NanoSIMS, IMS-1280 and TOF-SIMS), noble gas mass spectrometry, atom probe tomography, scanning electron microscopy and electron microprobe analysis. Sample preparation for atom-probe work is performed with focused ion beam workstations.