• Research Professor, Earth and Planetary Sciences
• Research Professor, Physics
• Research Professor, McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences

• B.S. in Physics at Technical University of Vienna, Austria
• Ph.D. in Physics at Washington University in Saint Louis

News Stories & Tip Sheets:

Showing 2 Stories.

'The Zinner Impact' Physicist to be recognized for helping 'revolutionize astronomy' Jan. 30, 2007 -- Studying stars has never been so easy, thanks to Ernst K. Zinner, Ph.D., research professor of physics and of earth and planetary sciences, both in Arts & Sciences, at Washington University. For the past 30-plus years, Zinner has helped develop and fine-tune increasingly sophisticated instruments that allow researchers to get detailed information about circumstellar and interstellar dust — actual stardust — right in their own labs. These precision instruments use a measurement technique called secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS). To recognize Zinner's important contributions to the development of SIMS and its many applications in the earth and space sciences, a scientific symposium will be held Feb. 3-4 in Crow Hall, Room 201.

Mystery solved First silicate stardust found in a meteorite March 4, 2004 -- Ann Nguyen chose a risky project for her graduate studies at Washington University in St. Louis. A university team had already sifted through 100,000 grains from a meteorite to look for a particular type of stardust — without success. In 2000, Nguyen decided to try again. About 59,000 grains later, her gutsy decision paid off. In the March 5 issue of Science, Nguyen and her advisor, Ernst K. Zinner, Ph.D., research professor of physics and of earth and planetary sciences, both in Arts & Sciences, describe nine specks of silicate stardust — presolar silicate grains — from one of the most primitive meteorites known.

Showing 2 Stories.

Clips:

Showing 1 Clips.

Astronomers sweep space for the sources of cosmic dust Science Magazine online Nov. 1, 2005 -- Article on new observing tools scientists can use to study interstellar dust. Astronomers know that interstellar dust illuminates the erratic deaths of stars, and it traces a direct link from stars to the birth of our solar system — and ultimately, to Earth. WUSTL physicist and cosmochemist Ernst Zinner comments.

Research interests

The research interests of Professor Zinner are centered on the study of primitive meteorites and interplanetary dust, particularly their record of the nucleosynthesis of elements in stars and the formation of the solar system. The most important record is contained in the anomalous isotopic compositions of refractory phases from primitive meteorites. These phases are of two kinds: 1) solids that formed in the solar system, but that inherited isotopic anomalies from precursors that were not completely homogenized, and 2) presolar grains that condensed in the expanding atmospheres and the explosions of stars and survived the formation of the solar system. In the study of these objects, ion microprobe analysis has played an exceedingly important role. The reason is that this technique allows the chemical and isotopic analysis of microscopic samples, and that the largest isotopic anomalies (i.e., isotopic ratios different from average terrestrial values) are carried by small mineral grains.

An example of the first kind is hibonite (CaAl12O19). Small hibonite-bearing inclusions have large isotopic anomalies in Ca and Ti. Although the distribution of trace elements in the hibonite indicates a solar system origin, the dominant isotopic signature (excesses in 48Ca and 50Ti) gives evidence for a nucleosynthetic component produced in the cores of massive stars during supernova explosions. Another type of isotopic record present in certain small meteoritic phases are excesses of isotopes due to the decay of short-lived, now extinct radionuclides. Examples for the latter are 26Al (half life 7.2 x 105 y) and 53 Mn (half life 3.5 x 106 y). Ion probe studies of their daughter products ( 26Mg and 53Cr, respectively) can provide information on the distribution of the parent nuclides and on the history of processes in the early solar system on a time scale of less than a million years.

In recent years, Professor Zinner and co-workers have identified four types of presolar dust in meteorites: silicon carbide, graphite, corundum, and silicon nitride. The first two types carry exotic noble gases and all grains are characterized by isotopic compositions of the major (C, O, Si), minor, and trace elements (N, Mg, Ca, Ti, Ba, Nd) that are completely different from those found in the solar system, indicating a presolar origin for the dust grains in the cooling gas of stellar atmospheres. The ion microprobe permits isotopic measurements in individual dust grains down to 1 m in size. This in turn helps in identifying specific stellar sources for silicon carbide and graphite. Red giants, Wolf Rayet stars, novae, and supernovae are possible production sites of carbonaceous dust grains. Corundum and most of the SiC grains are believed to come from red giant stars, stars that lose a large part of their atmosphere at the end of their lives, corundum from oxygen-rich stars, SiC from carbon stars. On the other hand, low density graphite grains, a rare subtype of SiC, and silicon nitride apparently come from supernovae, massive stars that explode after the exhaustion of the nuclear fuel in their interior. The presence of isotopes that are produced in very different layers of supernovae in the same grains are evidence for turbulent mixing during supernova explosions.

Zinner has been elected a Fellow of the Meteoritical Society and the American Physical Society and Geochemistry Fellow of the Geochemical Society and the European Association for Geochemistry. He received the Antarctic Service Medal of the National Science Foundation (1987), the J. Lawrence Smith Medal of the National Academy of Sciences (1997), the Leonard Medal of the Meteoritical Society (1997). A member of AAAS, AGU and Sigma Xi, Zinner has served on many committees, among them the ESA/NASA Science Definition Team of Rosetta (Comet Nucleus Sample Return Mission) and NASA's Lunar and Planetary Geoscience Review Panel (twice). He is associate editor of Meteoritics & Planetary Science.

Education/positions

He obtained his undergraduate degree in physics at the Technical University of Vienna, Austria, and his Ph.D. in physics at Washington University. He is research professor of physics and of earth and planetary sciences at Washington University. He had visiting appointments at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Heidelberg, Germany, (1980), Technical University of Vienna (1980-1982), University of Pavia, Italy (1989), University of Bern, Switzerland (1994), and the Australian National University, Canberra, (1995).

Zinner did his dissertation research in high energy physics on the decay. After joining the Laboratory for Space Sciences at Washington University he worked on the effects of the interplanetary environment on the moon and meteoritic parent bodies. This work was based on the study of nuclear particle tracks, solar wind implanted elements and micrometeoroid craters. Zinner was the team leader of the Washington University - JSC - MPI Heidelberg - Univ. Munich LDEF interplanetary dust experiment which was launched in April 1984 and retrieved in January 1990. He has worked with ion microprobes since 1974 and, especially since the installation of the Cameca IMS 3f instrument in 1982, on isotopic and trace element studies of meteorites and interplanetary dust with implications for early solar system chronology, nucleosynthesis of elements in stars and the history of presolar material.

Recent publications

Anders E. and Zinner E. (1993) Interstellar grains in primitive meteorites: Diamond, silicon carbide, and graphite. Meteoritics 28, 490-514.

MacPherson G. J., Davis A. M. and Zinner E. K. (1995) The distribution of aluminum-26 in the early solar system-A reappraisal. Meteoritics 30, 365-386.

Endress M., Zinner E. and Bischoff A. (1996) Early aqueous activity on primitive meteorite parent bodies. Nature 379, 701-703.

Nittler L. R., Amari S., Zinner E., Woosley S. E. and Lewis R. S. (1996) Extinct 44Ti in presolar graphite and SiC: Proof of a supernova origin. Astrophys. J. Lett. 462, L31-L34.

Nittler L. R., Alexander C. M. O. D., Gao X., Walker R. M. and Zinner E. (1997) Stellar sapphires: The properties and origins of presolar Al2O3 in meteorites. Astrophys. J. 483, 475-495.

Zinner E. (1997) Presolar Material in Meteorites: an Overview. In Astrophysical Implications of the Laboratory Study of Presolar Materials (eds. T. Bernatowicz and E. Zinner) AIP, New York, 3-26.

Zinner E. (1998) Stellar nucleosynthesis and the isotopic composition of presolar grains from primitive meteorites. Ann. Rev. Earth and Planet. Sci. 26, 147-188.

Zinner E. (1998) Trends in the study of presolar dust grains from primitive meteorites. Met. & Planet. Sci. 33, 549-564.

Lugaro M., Zinner E., Gallino R. and Amari S. (1999) Si isotopic ratios in mainstream presolar SiC grains revisited. Astrophys. J. 527, 369-394.

Amari S., Zinner E., Lewis R. S. (2000) Isotopic compositions of different presolar SiC size fractions from the Murchison meteorite. Met. & Planet. Sci. 35, 997-1014.

Amari S., Nittler L. R., Zinner E., Gallino R., Lugaro M. and Lewis R. S. (2001) Presolar SiC grains of type Y: Origin from low-metallicity AGB stars. Astrophys. J. 546, 248-266.

Amari, S., Gao, X., Nittler, L., Zinner, E., José, J., Hernanz and M., Lewis, R. S. (2001) Presolar grains from novae. Astrophys. J. 551, 1065-1072.