Martin Bizzarro

Martin Bizzarro is Professor at the Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen, and Director of the Centre for Star and Planet Formation. He earned his PhD in 2003 from the Université du Québec à Montréal before moving to Denmark, where he established one of the world’s leading laboratories for isotope geochemistry and cosmochemistry.

Bizzarro’s research focuses on the origin and evolution of planetary systems, combining high-precision isotopic analyses with astrophysical models. He has pioneered the use of nucleosynthetic isotope “fingerprints” to trace the stellar sources of planetary building blocks and to test theories of planet formation such as streaming instability and pebble accretion. His work has shown that Earth and other terrestrial planets formed far more rapidly than once thought, and that the delivery of volatiles, including water, may be a natural outcome of planet formation rather than a rare event.

His group has led landmark studies of Martian zircons from the NWA 7034/7533 (“Black Beauty”) meteorite and is actively engaged in analyzing samples returned from asteroids Ryugu and Bennu. These efforts provide some of the most precise constraints on planetary formation timescales and the preservation of primordial isotopic reservoirs.

He has published extensively in Nature and Science, and has received prestigious awards, including several grants from the European Research Council. He has also trained a generation of young researchers now advancing the frontiers of cosmochemistry and planetary science.