astronomy

Meredith G. Hastings

Meredith G. Hastings is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Meredith G. Hastings rather than just read about it. In short: Meredith G. Hastings is an American atmospheric chemist and a professor of earth, environmental, and planetary sciences at Brown University.

Key takeaways

Meredith G. Hastings belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Meredith G. Hastings to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Meredith G. Hastings from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Meredith G. Hastings is an American atmospheric chemist and a professor of earth, environmental, and planetary sciences at Brown University. Her research focuses on the reactive nitrogen cycle and how atmospheric chemistry affects climate. She is also the founder and president of the Earth Science Women's Network (ESWN).

Early life and education Hastings graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in marine science and chemistry from the University of Miami, Coral Gables in 1998. After her undergraduate she did a research internship at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, NJ. She credits this position to her interest in atmospheric chemistry. By 2004 Hastings had completed her Ph.D. in the Princeton University department of Geosciences. Her thesis studied reactive nitrogen using measurements of stable isotopes and was titled "Studies of Reactive Nitrogen in the Atmosphere Using Global Modeling and Stable Isotope Measurements".

Career and research Following her Ph.D. work at Princeton, Hastings became a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington in the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean Department of Atmospheric Sciences (JISAO). After completing her postdoctoral work in 2008, Hastings joined the faculty at Brown University as an assistant professor in the Department of Geological Sciences and Environmental Change Initiative. Hastings became an associate professor of earth, environmental and planetary sciences at Brown University in 2015 and was promoted to professor in 2020. She was the deputy director of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society between 2020 and 2023. Hastings’ work focuses around the reactive nitrogen cycle and using nitrate deposition to see how human activity impacts atmospheric composition. This includes data from a variety of sources such as seawater nitrate levels, freshwater nitrate levels, and ice core nitrate levels. Using this data her studies have come to conclusions about how human activities and environmental responses interact to explain how the climate changes. In 2014 Hastings launched the Earth Science Women's Network (ESWN) as a non-profit, an organization she co-founded in 2002. She is currently president of the non-profit, which seeks to promote women in the earth sciences. The Earth Science Women's Network is a member-driven organization which has had several prominent creations since its inception. In 2014 the ESWN created the Promoting Geoscience, Research, Education and Success (PROGRESS) initiative which focused on determining the role same-gender mentoring on the retention of women in the geosciences. The initiative was funded by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant. In 2017, Hastings and the ESWN partnered with the Association for Women Geoscientists and the American Geophysical Union to launch the ADVANCEGeo Partnership. The partnership seeks to address the issue of sexual harassment in the earth, space and environmental sciences and was also funded by a NSF grant. Hastings was also the recipient of the Atmospheric Sciences Ascent Award, which the American Geophysical Union awarded her in 2014. The award is designed to recognize research by mid-career scientists in the fields of atmospheric and climate sciences. She was recognized for her work modeling aerosol properties and their impacts on the atmosphere. Hastings was also recognized with a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation in 2014 supporting her work studying where the nitrous oxide in the atmosphere is being emitted from. The project is entitled Quantifying the Isotopic Signature of Nitrogen Oxides Emissions Sources.

Publications Hastings' work has been published in several scientific journals, including Science, The Journal of Geophysical Research, Environmental Science & Technology, and Analytical Chemistry. Her most cited publications are listed below:

KL Casciotti, DM Sigman, MG Hastings, JK Böhlke, A Hilker (2002) Measurement of the oxygen isotopic composition of nitrate in seawater and freshwater using the denitrifier method. Analytical Chemistry, 74 (19), 4905-4912 MG Hastings, JC Jarvis, EJ Steig (2009) Anthropogenic impacts on nitrogen isotopes of ice-core nitrate. Science, 324 (5932), 1288-1288 B Alexander, MG Hastings, DJ Allman, J Dachs, JA Thornton, SA Kunasek (2009) Quantifying atmospheric nitrate formation pathways based on a global model of the oxygen isotopic composition (Δ 17 O) of atmospheric nitrate. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 9 (14), 5043-5056

Awards and recognition 2014, Atmospheric Sciences Ascent Award, American Geophysical Union 2014, CAREER Award, National Science Foundation

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Meredith G. Hastings

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Meredith G. Hastings claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Meredith G. Hastings before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Meredith G. Hastings ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Meredith G. Hastings

In research: Meredith G. Hastings appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Meredith G. Hastings in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Meredith G. Hastings is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics American women academics, American women scientists, Atmospheric chemists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Meredith G. Hastings outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Meredith G. Hastings in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Meredith G. Hastings means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Meredith G. Hastings out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Meredith G. Hastings in simple terms?

Meredith G. Hastings is an American atmospheric chemist and a professor of earth, environmental, and planetary sciences at Brown University.

Why does Meredith G. Hastings matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Meredith G. Hastings?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Meredith G. Hastings.