Dr Abigail Allwood Print Page

The sculpture commemorates Australian geologist and astrobiologist Dr Abigail Allwood.

Dr Abigail Allwood works at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in the United States of America and studies stromatolites, detection of life on other planets, and evolution of life on early Earth. Her early work gained notability for finding evidence of life in 3.45 billion year old stromatolites in the Pilbara formation in Australia. She is now a principal investigator on the Mars Rover 2020 team searching for evidence of life on Mars using the Planetary Instrument for X-Ray Lithochemistry (PIXL).  She is the first female and first Australian principal investigator on a NASA Mars mission.

Allwood grew up in Brisbane, and was inspired by Carl Sagan and his description of the Voyager missions in the series Cosmos.  She went on to accomplish an undergraduate degree in geosciences, and completed her PhD at Macquarie University in New South Wales in 2006.  During her PhD, she published on 3.45 billion years old stromatolites in the Pilbara formation, describing the diversity of early life on the Archean Earth.

Note:   Unveiling late 2023 

Location

Details

Dedication