Christine Floss (1961–2018) was a German-born American cosmochemist whose research involved studying the atomic composition of meteorites, interplanetary dust, and moon rocks in order to understand the formation of the Solar System.
[4] She majored in German at Purdue University, graduating in 1983,[3] but cast around in many directions for a career, eventually finding her life interest in a geology class she took to fulfil a general education requirement.
[5] Floss earned a second bachelor's degree in geology from Indiana University Bloomington, in 1987,[3] with a senior thesis on moon rocks advised by Abhijit Basu.
[5] Crozaz later wrote: "She was definitely one of our best students, and I wondered how she managed to complete her PhD in only four years while at the same time raising two young girls".
[3] She became a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany,[2] "mostly for personal reasons": following her future husband, Frank Stadermann, a German researcher in the same specialty whom she had met when he was a visiting student at Washington University.