Oral histories in meteoritics and planetary science: III. Robert M. Walker

In this interview, taped in 2000 August, during the meeting of the Meteoritical Society in Chicago, Robert Walker recalls that he began studying meteorites when he realized that they should display particle tracks caused by their bombardment by cosmic rays. Walker was much intrigued by the idea of finding fossil tracks from old cosmic rays. Among his more important accomplishments, he lists the discovery of tracks of extremely heavy cosmic rays in meteorites and those of very low-energy solar flare particles in lunar samples. He has played a leadership role in research on interplanetary dust particles and on presolar grains in meteorites in an effort to learn more about the origins of the elements. Walker has spent most of his career at Washington University in St. Louis where he established the McDonnell Center for Space Science. In 1993, the Meteoritical Society presented him with the Leonard Medal.