Fang-Zhen Teng is a geochemist who studies, broadly, the formation and evolution of the Earth. To do this, he uses chemical isotopes, which, for any particular rock, can tell him where in world it originated, how long it took to cool, and as such the age of the crust of which it is a part His work takes him beyond these planetary reaches, and he also looks at how the Moon and Mars formed, as well as the origins of the solar system. In recognition of his work, he has received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation and an MSA Award from the Mineralogical Society of America, given to individuals in the beginning of their careers for outstanding contributions to minerology.