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.
[1] 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,[2] which became an important foundation of modern crystal chemistry.
In 1986, he was hired by the Carnegie Institute of Science to head the Geophysics Laboratory until 1998.
He received the inaugural Medal for Excellence from the International Mineralogical Association in 2008.