Our collective work in the geosciences has made, and must continue to make, a difference in how humans interact with our planet. - Susan Kieffer

Furthermore, in the current intellectual climate, and with the large numbers of scientists in the world today, there are few measures of creativity. We measure productivity, not not simple numerical counting, or even measures of “impact.” Perhaps as a community, we need a new form of peer evaluations of individuals within that context.

One of the things I discovered in writing my book, The Dynamics of Disaster, was the thrill of learning about completely new things that my research would never ever have taken me into.

I think the only thing that has a broader range of scales than geology is astronomy. Geologists really look at things from the atomic scale to the solar system scale, and we potentially think about planets beyond the solar system.