Roger Fu

Roger Fu sits in front of a display case of rock samples

Roger Fu

Photograph by Stu Rosner

In the year and a half between college (at Harvard) and graduate school (at MIT), Roger Fu ’09 lived in an isolated village in the mountains of southern Chile, learning to speak Mapuche with his neighbors and studying indigenous astronomy. People there, he says, understood the stars “based on their role in the night, rather than the physical object”: a star rising at 8 p.m. always carried the same name, even as the earth and heavens rotated. And, he observed, “When you talk about astronomy, everyone’s interested. Understanding what’s in the sky, where everything came from—it’s part of the human need.” For him, too: now Loeb associate professor of the natural sciences in the department of earth and planetary sciences (his undergraduate concentration), Fu studies paleomagnetics, analyzing “the oldest possible rocks”—found in places like northwestern Australia, South Africa, Canada, and Minnesota—to reconstruct magnetic fields from eons ago. In the 1950s, paleomagnetics provided early evidence of plate tectonics, and in a recent study, Fu determined that the continents were in motion at least 3.25 billion years ago, 500 million years earlier than previously thought. He has analyzed Martian meteorites and found that the planet had a strong magnetic field 3.9 billion years ago, which would have supported a thicker atmosphere—and a wetter, more habitable surface. All this research is enabled, Fu says, by the Quantum Diamond Microscope, a magnetometer developed in his lab that can measure tiny samples and identify specific magnetized particles. Describing it, Fu sounds as excited as he was at 11, when he received a telescope for Christmas and stumbled across Jupiter, with its moons and cloud belt, on the first night. He still stargazes for fun—Harvard Forest is a favorite spot—but after having a son last fall, his gaze is more often nearer to home. 

Click here for the May-June 2023 issue table of contents

Read more articles by Lydialyle Gibson

You might also like

Harvard Releases Antisemitism and Anti-Muslim Task Force Reports

University publishes findings from thorough examinations of campus conditions.

Harvard Renames Diversity Office

The decision follows pressure from the Trump administration to eliminate DEI practices. 

Centralizing University Discipline

Harvard establishes new disciplinary procedures for campus protest violations.

Most popular

Harvard Renames Diversity Office

The decision follows pressure from the Trump administration to eliminate DEI practices. 

Harvard Releases Antisemitism and Anti-Muslim Task Force Reports

University publishes findings from thorough examinations of campus conditions.

The New Gender Gaps

What to do as men and boys fall behind

Explore More From Current Issue

The Trump Administration's Impact on Higher Education

Unprecedented federal actions against research funding, diversity, speech, and more

89664

Jessica Shand—Math and Music at Harvard

Jessica Shand blends math and music.

89677

Paper Peepshows at Harvard's Baker Library

How “paper peepshows” brought distant realms to life

89684