Jenny Bergner

Mimicking the chemistry of outer space to explain how planets form

- Andrea Gawrylewski

FIELD // ASTROCHEMISTRY University of California, Berkeley AGE 34

The laws of chemistry get pushed to the limits in Jenny Bergner’s astrochemistry lab at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is pondering some of the biggest questions in the universe: How do planets form?

And how did life arise in the first place? To do so, she leads a team studying the exotic chemistry that happens under the crushing cold and near-perfect vacuum of interstellar space.