National Geographic released its list of the top 20 trends in scientific discoveries of the last decade. Three of those discoveries were the result of work done by LSU scientists, two of them women.
Those LSU professors whose work was included in the list are:
• Professor of Physics and Astronomy Gabriela Gonzalez, for her work with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) in Livingston Parish that was the first to detect gravitational waves first theorized about by Albert Einstein.
• Assistant Professor of Geography and Anthropology Juliet Brophy, who was part of a team of researchers with the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa that discovered fossils of a new species: Homo naledi.
• Biologist Christopher Austin, for his role in a study about the world’s smallest known vertebrate, P. amauensis, a new species of frog about the size of a housefly discovered in Papua New Guinea in 2010.
“In the past 10 years, scientists around the world made remarkable progress toward understanding the human body, our planet, and the cosmos that surrounds us,” National Geographic reports. “What’s more, science in the 2010s became more global and collaborative than ever before. These days, major breakthroughs are likelier to come from groups of 3,000 scientists than groups of three.”
Read the full rankings here.
