The Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in Saint Louis
Whether you’re interested in studying the world beneath your feet, or worlds farther away, the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences provides the tools for understanding the processes that shaped our planet and other solar system bodies. Understanding the Earth system is also the key to addressing many environmental challenges, including climate change, water supply, and energy. Thus, as an earth scientist, you would be uniquely poised to help solve some of society’s most pressing problems. Because planets are complex systems, earth and planetary sciences is by necessity an interdisciplinary field. We apply biology, chemistry, physics, and math to the investigation of topics such as early life on Earth, the structure of the Earth’s deep interior, the nature of contaminant transport, and the evidence for water on Mars. If you’ve developed a passion for the basic sciences and are looking for a way to study these sciences outside traditional disciplinary boundaries, earth and planetary sciences is an ideal choice of major.
