Kirsty Elizabeth Helena Penkman is a analytical chemist and geochemist known for her research in biomolecular archaeology, the use of ancient DNA, amino acid dating, and other biomolecules in order to date fossils and learn about the world as it was in prehistoric times.
[3] Penkman's research has dated early archeology found in East Anglia to 700,000 years ago, the oldest artifacts known in Northern Europe.
[4] She has argued that climate change and human landscape modification are likely to destroy the ancient biological materials that go into her studies.
[7] Penkman is the 2016 winner of the Joseph Black Award of the Royal Society of Chemistry "for rigorous and ground-breaking work in the field of amino acid racemisation dating and its application to earth and archaeological sciences".
[11] Her 2005 doctoral thesis title was "Amino acid geochronology: a closed system approach to test and refine the UK model".