Professor Lewis Ashwal

As a world expert on the origin of anorthositic and related rocks, Professor Lewis Ashwal’s expertise extends across the areas of petrology, petrography, geochemistry, mineralogy and isotope systematics of igneous & metamorphic rocks and their application to largescale processes of tectonics and geodynamics.

He completed his BSc at State University of New York, Master’s at the University of Massachusetts, and PhD in geology at Princeton University. Currently a professor of geology at the University of the Witwatersrand, he also held a professorship at Rand Afrikaans University (now the University of Johannesburg) and was a staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute and a post-doctoral research associate at the NASA Johnson Space Center in the USA.

Since 1974, his research has generated 140 papers, published in journals such as the South African Journal of Geology; Nature Communications; and the Journal of Petrology. His books on Anorthosites and Greenstone Belts (co-edited) stand as definitive works on those subjects.

His work has garnered considerable accolades. In 2018 he was selected as the Geological Society of South Africa Du Toit Memorial Lecturer, and in 2024 he won the GSSA Draper Memorial Medal, their highest accolade. In 2024 he won the Annual Wits University Vice Chancellor’s Research Award.