Jeffrey Bada
| Jeffrey L. Bada | |
|---|---|
| Born |
September 10, 1942 San Diego, California |
| Residence | La Jolla, California |
| Citizenship | US |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields |
Chemistry Astrobiology |
| Institutions | University of California, San Diego |
| Alma mater |
San Diego State University (BS) University of California, San Diego (PhD) |
| Doctoral advisor | Stanley Miller |
| Known for | Origin of life |
|
Website Homepage at SCRIPPS |
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Jeffrey L. Bada (born September 10, 1942) is an American chemist well known for his works in the study of the origin of life. He is Distinguished Research Professor of Marine Chemistry and former Director of the NASA Specialized Center of Research and Training (NSCORT) in Exobiology at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. Bada has played a pioneering role in the development of the Mars Organic Detector (MOD) instrument package that is designed to search for amino acids and other organic compounds directly on the surface of Mars during future ESA and NASA missions.
Jeffrey Bada studied at the San Diego State University and obtained BS in chemistry in 1965. He wanted to become a theoretical chemist, applying quantum mechanics to chemistry and had no prior interest in prebiotic chemistry. Then he met Stanley Miller at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) who inspired him to take up the spark discharge experiment a step forward by studying amino acid stability. Bada completed PhD in Chemistry in 1968 under Miller's supervision. He worked as Research Fellow at the Hoffman Labs of the Department of Geological Science at Harvard University for one year. In 1968 he joined the UCSD Department of Chemistry as Instructor, and became Assistant Professor of Marine Chemistry in 1969. He became Associate Professor in 1974 and full professor in 1980. Between 1980 and 2009 he was Director of NASA Specialized Center of Research and Training (NSCORT) in Exobiology. In 2009 he was promoted to Distinguished Professor, and in 2010 to Distinguished Research Professor. He has more than 200 technical publications.
As a marine geochemist, Jeffrey Bada made significant research in geochronology. During the 1970s and 1980s he developed an important technique of marine sediment dating through the measurement of the racemisation rates of amino acids. This method is useful for dating a large span in geological time scale. This is useful in marine biology, palaeontology and archaeology for dating millions of years old organic materials based on their amino acid content.
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