Prof. em. Dr. Ann Marie Hirt

Ann Marie Hirt-Tasillo was awarded the title of Professor (Titularprofessor) at ETH Zurich in 2009.

Ann M. Hirt-Tasillo teaches in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and since 2003 heads the Laboratory for Natural Magnetism (LNM). As a member of the Group Earth and Planetary Magnetism in the Institute of Geophysics she leads several multi-disciplinary research projects. In 2008 she was named Professor at the ETH Zurich.

She was born in 1955 in Pittsburgh, USA, and received B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees, both in Geology, from Waynesburg College, USA, and the University of Toronto, Canada, in 1977 and 1980, respectively. In 1986 she completed her PhD studies in the area of magnetic anisotropy and paleomagnetism at the Institute for Geophysics, ETH Zurich, Switzerland, where she subsequently assumed a research position. In 1996 she received her habilitation (Venia Legendi) in the field Geophysics at ETH Zurich.

Her research interests are focused on the application of magnetic properties to various problems arising in the earth and environmental sciences, as well as the life sciences. Throughout her academic career, she studied the magnetic anisotropy, ranging from fundamental properties of minerals to its relationship to rock deformation. A further area of research covers the influence of environmmetal conditions on the magnetic properties of soils and lacustrine sediments. Together with researchers from the University Hospital Zürich, she also investigates the magnetic mineralogy of brain and tumor tissue to gain a better understanding of their role in neurological diseases. Ann Hirt is Associate Editor for the Swiss Journal of Earth Sciences and chairs the Working Group Rock Magnetism of the International Association of Aeronomy and Geomagnetism (IAGA).