About Peter Buseck
Professor Peter Buseck, ASU’s longest serving full-time faculty member (1963-2023), is renowned for his pioneering use of high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) for the study of meteorites and mineral structures. His analyses of crystals and their defects at the atomic scale transformed our understanding of solid-state geochemistry and cosmochemistry.
Buseck joined the ASU faculty in 1963, attracted by the opportunity to work with the meteorites in the newly founded Center for Meteorite Studies. He served as an active member of the ASU faculty for 60 years. As Professor Emeritus, he continues to champion meteoritics research in both professional and public forums. His research contributions span diverse types of samples that include carbonaceous chondrite, pallasite, and Martian meteorites, as well as interplanetary dust particles and terrestrial aerosols.
The definitive research to determine the matrix mineralogy of carbonaceous chondrites was accomplished by Tomeoka and Buseck’s use of high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) (1, 2). Buseck’s next most cited paper related to meteorites was in the journal Science about carbyne (3), which also led to a series of papers, the most recent of which appeared in 2025.
The Buseck team performed the first HRTEM studies of interplanetary dust particles (4, 5) as well as a series of papers on magnetotactic bacteria relevant to the reported meteorite evidence of life on Mars (6, 7). Significant “firsts” in Buseck’s other areas of study are on the internal structures of individual atmospheric aerosol particles and the effects of such particles on climate (8), the pioneering use of HRTEM to study mineral structures and defects at the sub-unit-cell scale in silicates (9, 10), sulfides (11), and oxides (12), as well as solid-state mineral reaction mechanisms (13). Other relevant papers are on fullerenes (14) and Fe-Mg diffusion (15). Buseck and his team had a total of 40 papers (including 6 covers) published in Science, Nature, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
(3) Carbyne forms of carbon: Do they exist? P.P.K. Smith and P.R. Buseck, Science 216, 984–986, 1982.
(10) Asbestiform chain silicates: New minerals and structural groups, D.R. Veblen, P.R. Buseck, and C.W. Burnham, Science 198, 359–365 & cover photograph, 1977.
(12) Todorokites: A new family of naturally occurring manganese oxides, S. Turner and P.R. Buseck, Science 212, 1024–1027 & cover photograph, 1981.
