Is there work, and life, or is there just one thing: Life.

A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman published by William Morrow: My memoir about life as a scientist and exploration of Earth and space.

“ A riveting book, beautifully written. . . . With a brave candor, Elkins-Tanton examines all aspects of her experiences—personal and professional, the good and the bad—to plumb the very meaning of her life. . . . [She provides] a ringside seat to the discomforts and thrills of a geological expedition.”

—Washington Post

“ Elkins-Tanton shines in her ability to render the process of scientific discovery in eloquent prose. . . . A wonderful paean to the beauty of scientific exploration.”

—Publishers Weekly

“ A deeply personal and enlightening book of one amazing woman’s leadership and teachings in science and self-discovery.”

—Col. Chris Hadfield, former commander of the International Space Station and #1 bestselling author of An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth

“ The principal investigator of NASA’s Psyche mission lays bare the challenges and rewards of succeeding as a woman in a male-dominated field and how the sublime beauty of the universe brought her strength and solace. . . . Enthralling and inspiring. . . . A fearless, riveting, and galvanizing book from a star in the U.S. space program.”

—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“ Lindy Elkins-Tanton has led a fascinating life, full of wonder and discovery and also pain and loss. Her memoir, A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman, is fierce, absorbing, and ultimately inspiring.”

—Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction

“[A] beautiful and inspiring memoir.”

—The Christian Science Monitor (Best Books of the Year, 2022)

“ A captivating story about an exceptional career and a remarkable life.”

—Ars Technica

Contact me about speaking on teams, leadership, and space exploration, and purchase Portrait through one of these links:

Amazon | Bookshop.org | Google Play | HarperCollins | IndieBound

About

That’s me on the left, under the spacecraft. I’m the lead (P.I.) of the NASA Psyche mission. (Media inquiries for Psyche: Gretchen McCartney, JPL: Gretchen.P.McCartney@jpl.nasa.gov)

The origin of rocky planets and the evolution of the solid Earth are the topics of my research. Here’s my peer-reviewed publication list, and the other books I’ve written.

At Arizona State University, I’m the Vice President for the Interplanetary Initiative, where we are working on a positive human space exploration future. We run a special 3-year major.

I believe that all people should have a sense of agency and confidence in learning and problem-solving. Turner Bohlen, Carolyn Bickers, James Tanton, and I founded Beagle Learning.

Academic research needs to be more focused on big questions, more effective, and more inclusive. Here’s my essay, “Time to Say Goodbye to Our Heroes?” laying it down.

Here’s a bio with some photos. I enjoy speaking and outreach.

Natural World

Hawks. Mosses. Lichens. Fishers. Foxes. Quail. Lizards. I deeply admire and am fascinated by the natural world.

I take photos of natural textures at all scales, and I use a night-time and day-time trail camera, and I work on identifying plants and mosses and insects. And it’s fun to share.

Frost crystals on a cold morning in Massachusetts. Credit: Lindy Elkins-Tanton

Billows of fine grass in the afternoon sunlight feels infinitely peaceful to me. Credit: Lindy Elkins-Tanton

Speaking

Speaking about teams and leadership and science and space and learning is a pleasure, whether the audience is from a company, the public, or a school. Be in touch and we’ll schedule.

I give dozens of talks and panel discussions per year, ranging from a small elementary school classroom to hundreds or thousands of people at a big public event. You can get a sense of some of my speaking styles on my Youtube channel. My most requested topics are:

Human by Human: The Art & Science of Exceptional Teams & How to Get Them to Look Up & Out

In our increasingly technical and complex world, we need the best thinkers, makers and problem-solvers. We also want people who can deal with the challenges facing our organizations, a structure that can focus us on the most critical questions and enable faster adoption of innovations. All are possible. Employees can be taught these skills that help them innovate, lead and create change, and processes can be created that set you up for the future. In this talk or workshop, Lindy Elkins-Tanton draws from 30 years of experience leading diverse, interdisciplinary research and technical teams and her process that started 40 pilot projects over the past six years and yielded an 8x return on her investment to date, to show you how to build exceptional teams and how you get them to look up and out.

Hearing Every Voice: Setting Culture in Diverse Teams

There’s one crucial first step in a team that at a single stroke increases innovation, minimizes risk, reduces implicit bias and creates a communicative, positive culture: Letting every voice be heard. Drawing on 30 years of experience leading diverse, interdisciplinary science and technology teams, Lindy Elkins-Tanton will share the biggest lessons learned for setting culture and surviving crises in teams.

What’s the Most Important Question? Jumpstarting Critical Research & Building Interdisciplinary Teams

To deal with the challenges facing our organizations and our society, we need a structure that can create knowledge where we need it and enable faster adoption of innovations. This structure must enable broader participation on every axis, including gender, socioeconomic background, race, nationality and across disciplines. This is the moment to reimagine research—for the greatest use of resources, the greatest use of all human minds and the greatest progress into the most positive possible future. Using her process, Lindy Elkins-Tanton has started 40 pilot projects over the past six years, and these teams yielded an 6x return on our investment to date. No more incremental progress. No more focusing on unimportant goals. In this workshop, she’ll identify the most important questions in your area, and set up teams for pilot projects.

The NASA Psyche Mission: An Electric Journey to a Metal World

“Psyche” is both the name of an asteroid in the main belt, orbiting out past Mars, and the name of our NASA mission to visit that asteroid. Psyche’s density, radar and reflected light properties indicate that it is largely made of metal. Humans have never visited a world made of metal. So if Psyche turns out to be what we think, we’ll be visiting a new kind of world. Our spacecraft will launch in October 2023 and start its journey through space to this metal world. In this talk, Lindy Elkins-Tanton and her team discuss how a NASA mission is planned and built, the key aspects of a successful team culture and the huge crisis they faced and how they overcame it. Psyche will surprise us. The universe always outsteps even our best imaginations. And the whole Psyche team looks forward to sharing all they discover with everyone here on Earth.

The Gifts of a Curving Career Path: From Single Mother to Scientific Leader

Sometimes people think scientists always knew what they wanted to do and went straight at it from the age of five. Lindy Elkins-Tanton’s path was far curvier, and had as many downs as ups, on her way to leading a $1B robotic NASA mission to a metal asteroid. Maybe it’s clearer in hindsight than it was moving forward, but Elkins-Tanton sees now how her wish to work in teams where every person can succeed has driven most of her career choices. In this talk, she’ll share her story and path from single mother to scientific leader.

Books

Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman joins these other books by Elkins-Tanton:

Earth by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Linda T. Elkins-Tanton (Bloomsbury 2017)

“Earth is a magical, unusual, curious book…Cohen and Elkins-Tanton describe it as a ‘little book about an impossibly large subject.’ This subject is made even larger by Cohen and Elkins-Tanton’s forays into discussions of beauty, creativity, and imagination…” – PopMatters

Planetesimals by Linda T. Elkins-Tanton and Benjamin P. Weiss (Cambridge 2017)

A collection of papers for specialists: “…a host of academic cosmogonists, meteoriticists, Solar System dynamicists, and planetary physicists have collaborated to write 17 review papers. These are collected to form this impressive book, one that is beautifully produced, well-illustrated and an ideal introduction to the topic for a research qualified in maths and physics…I recommend this book unreservedly…” David W. Hughes Source: The Observatory

Volcanism and Global Environmental Change by Schmidt, Fristad, and Elkins-Tanton (Cambridge 2017)

A collection of papers for specialists: “…Many excellent and relevant maps, charts, graphs, and photographs appear throughout the text. This volume is an outstanding reference for geologists, volcanologists, geochemists, atmospheric scientists, and environmentalists.” T.L.T. Grose Source: Choice

The Solar System series by Linda T. Elkins-Tanton (Facts on File 2006, 2010)

The set consists of six books written for general-interest readers at high-school or college level: The Sun, Mercury, and Venus; The Earth and Moon; Asteroids, Meteorites, and Comets; Mars; Jupiter and Saturn; Neptune, Pluto, and the Outer Solar System.