Marcia McNutt

McNutt was valedictorian of her class at the Northrop Collegiate School (now The Blake School) in Minneapolis, graduating in 1970. She received a bachelor's degree in physics, graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from Colorado College in 1973. As a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow, she then studied geophysics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, where she earned a PhD in earth sciences in 1978. Her dissertation was titled Continental and Oceanic Isostasy.

After holding a brief appointment at the University of Minnesota, McNutt worked for three years on earthquake prediction at the USGS in Menlo Park, California. In 1982, she became an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and in 1988 was appointed Griswold Professor of Geophysics. She previously served as director of the Joint Program in Oceanography and Applied Ocean Science and Engineering, a cooperative effort of MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

McNutt is a National Association of Underwater Instructors (NAUI)-certified scuba diver and received training in underwater demolition and explosives handling through programs run by the United States Navy’s Underwater Demolition Team (UDT) and Navy SEALs.

Marcia Kemper McNutt's first husband Marcel Hoffmann Jr. died in 1988. They had three daughters: Meredith McNutt Hoffmann, and identical twins, Dana and Ashley Hoffmann. Ashley Hoffmann was "Miss Rodeo California" in 2009. Marcia McNutt is also a horse enthusiast and enjoys barrel racing on her mare Lulu.

McNutt is one of six women scientists featured in the 1995 PBS (WGBH-TV) series, "Discovering Women." How she excelled in science with a household of young daughters and the help she received from her housekeeper, Ann, and Ann's daughter, is described by Jocelyn Steinke in "A portrait of a woman as a scientist: breaking down barriers created by gender-role stereotypes".

In 1994, McNutt was one of 16 women faculty in the School of Science at MIT who drafted and co-signed a letter to then-Dean of Science Robert Birgeneau (later Chancellor of UC Berkeley), launching a campaign to highlight and challenge gender discrimination at MIT.

McNutt and Ian Young, an MBARI ship's captain, were married in 1996.

Afghan mineral wealth

In September 2011, a USGS team including Jack H. Medlin, Said Mirzad, Stephen G. Peters and Robert D. Tucker published a report which they presented at the Afghan embassy in Washington, DC, detailing 57 information packages about Areas of Interest (AOIs) that total at least 1,000,000 metric tons of untapped mineral deposits they have found in Afghanistan. Scientific American speculated that replacing "opium and Taliban strongholds with a mining bonanza" could "change U.S. foreign policy and world stability". This report, which points to resources that The New York Times said in 2010 were worth $1 trillion, was put into the public domain. McNutt said at the time:

There is always increased risk for commercial ventures investing in new mining facilities in frontier areas such as Afghanistan, but by putting our information on the locations and estimated quantities and grades of ores in the public domain, we lower that risk, spurring progress.

Family of journals expands

In 2015, Science announced the expansion of its family of journals to include Science Robotics and Science Immunology. Both were expected to begin publication in mid-2016. The first issue of Science Immunology was published in July 2016, while the first issue of Science Robotics was published in December 2016.

Cover photo and controversies

The cover of the 11 July 2014 issue depicted three transgender sex workers from Indonesia with their heads cropped out. Citing "she tricked me" and the "trans panic defense" sometimes used by perpetrators, The Washington Post noted that transgender people are 30 percent more likely than others to be the victims of violence. Numerous people objected in their blogs. Congresswoman Jackie Speier objected in a letter to the publisher. Science CEO and publisher Alan Leshner apologized to Speier and termed the cover "regrettable." McNutt apologized on Twitter and in Science for "any discomfort that this cover may have caused anyone" and gave her:

[P]romise that we will strive to do much better in the future to be sensitive to all groups and not assume that context and intent will speak for themselves.

The cover (and unfortunate response from the former editor of ScienceCareers) and two other columns provoked Aradhna Tripati, Jennifer Glass, Lenny Teytelman, and 600 other scientists to send a letter in 2015 to Science accusing the journal of perpetuating sexist stereotypes. In one column, Alice S. Huang, the former president of Science's publisher, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, advised a female postdoctoral fellow not to complain about her supervisor, whose habit was trying to look down the woman's shirt, as long as the supervisor didn't develop other advances. In another, the chief biochemist at Toronto's University Health Network said he was promoted because his wife had given up her career and PhD to support him. McNutt published a formal apology in July 2015, and said that she thought Science should start an advisory board made up of young scientists who might be in tune with the issues.