| Birth Date: | 3 March 1933 |
| Birth Place: | Lexington, Kentucky, USA |
| Death Place: | Tucson, Arizona, USA |
| Charles Thompson Prewitt | |
| Education: | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Martin Buerger |
| Thesis Title: | Structures and crystal chemistry of wollastonite and pectolite |
| Thesis Url: | https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/59079 |
| Workplaces: | DuPont Stony Brook University Carnegie Institution for Science University of Arizona |
Charles Thompson Prewitt (March 3, 1933 – April 28, 2022) was an American mineralogist and solid state chemist known for his work on structural chemistry of minerals and high-pressure chemistry.
Prewitt studied geology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an undergraduate and received his PhD in 1962 in crystallography at the same place under the supervision of Martin Buerger, where he worked on the structure determination of wollastonites and pectolites. He moved to DuPont Central Research Laboratory in Wilmington, Delaware, where he worked with Robert D. Shannon to compile the effective ionic radii,[1] which became an important foundation of modern crystal chemistry. Afterwards, Prewitt became a professor at Stony Brook University in 1969. In 1986, he was hired by the Carnegie Institute of Science to head the Geophysics Laboratory until 1998.[2] He later became an adjunt faculty member at University of Arizona.[3] [4]
Prewitt was a Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science in 1983. He was the vice president and president of the Mineralogical Society of America in 1983 and 1984, respectively.[5] He was awarded the Roebling Medal from the Mineralogical Society of America in 2003. He received the inaugural Medal for Excellence from the International Mineralogical Association in 2008.[6]