Biography

Janne Blichert-Toft left her native Denmark to come to live in France in 1994. She worked at the ENS de Lyon as Marie-Curie post-doctoral fellow, she became temporary lecturer and research assistant in 1996 and researcher at the CNRS in 1997, then director of research in 2002.

She was successively "visiting scientist" at Columbia University from 1988 to 1991 and at the University of California at Berkeley in 1996, Associate professor at the prestigious Caltech (California Institute of Technology) in 2003, visiting professor at Harvard University in 2000, then at the Australian National University in 2004, at Cambridge University in 2005, at Tokyo University in 2006, at Rice University in 2008 and at the University of Chicago in 2011. She became "Distinguished Wiess Visiting Scholar and Adjunct faculty" at Rice University in 2009.

In 1994, she had her first publication in Science and then a second in Nature of 1997. Janne Blichert-Toft was awarded the CNRS bronze medal, in 2001, distinguished for her research and the Etienne Roth Award from the Atomic Energy Commission awarded by the Academy of Sciences in 2005, before being elected Fellow of the Geochemical Society and the European Association of Geochemistry. In 2010, she won the CNRS silver medal in 2012 and was elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union in the same year. In 2015, she received the prestigious Medal Gold of Steno from the Danish Geological society, a medal awarded only once every five years. Since 2016, she has been elected a foreign member of the Danish Royal Academy of Sciences and Letters.

An active member of various learned societies in both France – such as the Société Philomathique de Paris in 2014 – and abroad, Janne Blichert-Toft – who has specialized over the course of her career in isotopic geochemistry, gaining a deep understanding of planetary mantle-crust evolution, as well as the chemical composition of the material of the solar system, was awarded, in 2018, with the Murchison medal by The Geological Society of London, for all of her work and her significant contribution in the field of geology and geochemistry.

In 2022, Janne Blichert-Toft received the Harry H. Hess Medal, awarded by the American Geophysical Union, and the Dolomieu Prize from the French Academy of Sciences, becoming the first woman to be awarded this prize. In 2023, she is elected Fellow of the American Mineralogical Society.

Leading light in the study of planetary mantles and crustal evolution on Earth and other Solar System bodies (e.g. Mars), Janne Blichert-Toft has helped pioneer bold new applications of isotope geochemistry. The European Association of Geochemistry awarded her the H.C. Urey Award 2024, the institution's highest distinction, in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the advancement of knowledge in geochemistry.