Toshiko Mayeda

Kuki was born in Tacoma, Washington.[1] She grew up in Yokkaichi, Mie, and Osaka.[1] When the United States entered Japan after Pearl Harbor during World War II, Kuki and her father were sent to the Tule Lake War Relocation Center.[2][3] Whilst there she met her future husband, Harry Mayeda.[4] Mayeda graduated with a bachelor's degree in Chemistry from the University of Chicago in 1949.[5]

Mayeda worked under the supervision of Harold Urey.[6] She was persuaded to remain at the University of Chicago by Robert N. Clayton, working as a technician from 1958.[7] She was described as an indomitable research assistant.[8] She worked with Harold Urey on primitive meteorites.[9][10] She worked with Cesare Emiliani on isotopic evaluation of the ice age.[9] Mayeda and Clayton's first research paper considered the use of Bromine pentafluoride to extract Isotopes of oxygen from rocks and minerals.[11] It remains their most cited work.[11]

From the 1970s until the late 1990s Mayeda and Clayton became famous for their use of the Isotopes of oxygen in the classification of meteorites.[7] They create several tests that were used across the field of meteorite and lunar sample analysis.[12][13][14] She studied variations in the abundances of different oxygen isotopes and assigned them to different formation temperatures.[15] Mayeda worked on the mass separation and chemistry of the Allende meteorite.[7][16]

In 1992 she identified a new type of meteorite, the Brachinite.[17] Clayton and Mayeda studied the Achondrite meteorites and identified that variations in the Oxygen-17 isotope within a planet are due to inhomogeneities in the Solar Nebula.[18] They analysed Shergotty meteorites and identified that there could have been a water-rich atmosphere.[19] She found distinct ratios between Oxygen-17, Oxygen-16 and Oxygen-18.[20] She studied the Bocaiuva meteorite, finding that the Eagle Station meteorite were formed due to impact heating.[21]

In 2002 she was awarded the Society Merit Prize from the Geochemical Society of Japan.[6] In the same year, an asteroid was named after her.[6] Mayeda's husband, Harry, died in 2003. Mayeda suffered from cancer and died on February 13, 2004.[6] In 2008 a special volume of the book Oxygen in the Solar System "The Solar System in Clayton-Mayeda Space" was dedicated to Clayton and Mayeda.[22]