Miriam Kastner (born January 22, 1935) is a Bratislavan born, (former Czechoslovakia) Israeli raised, American oceanographer and geochemist. Kastner is currently a distinguished professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. She is still recognized by her fundamental contributions to science and is well spoken of amongst colleagues.
Education Miriam Kastner enjoyed the sciences since she was a child and originally wanted to be a mathematician, however she later decided down the road that, math was not the career for her as there were far fewer careers to pursue in mathematics. Early on Miriam noticed that not many women were scientists, which inspired her to research different sciences. Kastner attended the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1964, where she received a minor in chemistry and a master's degree in geology. After graduation, she wrote her first formal paper about the hydrothermal systems of the Guaymas Basin, in the Gulf of California. Kastner attendedHarvard University, Boston, in 1970, where she was exposed to oceanography and later received her doctorate in geoscience. For three years, Kastner was the only woman in her department while studying at Harvard. Thus, women were not taken very seriously by other faculty members resulting in a discouraging environment. Faculty members also expected less from their female students and counterparts, although there were some who supported Kastner and fellow female academics, such as the Ph.D. committee.
Career Over the course of her career, Kastner progressed from being an associate professor, to a professor, and is now a distinguished professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, where she participated in writing and publishing 174 articles and journals. Kastner has worked with the Scripps Institution from 1972 till present. Kastner became the second female professor at the Scripps Institute, only two months after the first geophysicist had joined the faculty; this paved the way for many female scientists at the time and in the future. Prior to teaching at Scripps Institution, Kastner worked as a research associate at Harvard University in the department of geological sciences until 1970. In 1971 she worked at the University of Chicago as a research associate in the Department of Geophysical Sciences. Some believe she has accomplished more work than anyone else among the marine geology community and her publications contain high quality data and ideas that show consistency in addressing the big issues in Earth sciences. Miriam Kastner's research is primarily based in mineralogy and petrology, though the most important issue pursued in her career is fluid flow at subducting plate boundaries. Kastner from the SIO (Scripps Institution of Oceanography) situated in La Jolla, California, demonstrated that we didn't know of the existence of subsea hydrothermal vents until the 1980s. To illustrate the vast scale of these processes, she explained that the entire volume of the ocean circulates through hydrothermal systems about once every five million years, and through global subduction zones approximately once every 200 million years, linking seafloor processes directly to the long-term evolution of the Earth system. Throughout her long and successful career, Miriam Kastner produced dozens of publications highlighting her key research. Her first publication, dating back to 1965, examined the mineral glauconite and documented its properties. Over the next 15 or so years her research focused more on the analysis of deep sea sedimentation. For the next 20 years of her career she continued her research on deep sea sedimentation but her focus shifted more to hydrogeology and fluid dynamics and the effect of this sedimentation and mineral deposits. In recent years, she has examined isotopes and their concentrations in oceans. Most recently, Miriam has compiled a brief synopsis of her ocean drilling work over the past 50 years.
Academic roles Along with being a professor, Kastner has served many roles at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, including chair and vice chair of the faculty, associate director and director in the geosciences research division, chair of Academic Senate Committee on Research, as well as curricular group coordinator of geological sciences. From 2003 to 2005, she served on the National Research Council's Ocean Studies Board. As a female in a once male dominated profession, Kastner expressed that it was difficult to garner support from science-related funding agencies. She was glad to see recent improvement on the increase of women pursuing science related degrees, however she believes there is still room for improvement, despite roughly 50% of women being in a science program, but only approximately 20% are field researchers in the institutes. Young women should have more confidence when applying for field research positions, as support for women in the sciences has improved drastically in comparison to her earlier years.
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