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= Larry Nittler = Larry Nittler is a planetary scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC. The asteroid 5992 Nittler is named after him.

Education
Nittler was born in Denver, Colorado in 1969. He received his B.A. in physics from Cornell University in 1991, and his Ph. D. in physics from Washington University in 1996. Nittler was awarded a McDonnel Graduate Fellowship and a NASA Graduate Student Research Program Fellowship while at Washington University. During his time at Washington University, Nittler worked on presolar grains. Through his work on various primitive meteorites during his time at Washington University, Nittler found numerous presolar grains, consisting of SiC, Si3N4, graphite, and oxides. Some of these grains were found to have excesses of 44Ca, the radiogenic daughter of the extinct radionuclide 44Ti, which could only have been produced through a supernova.

Career
Nittler joined the Carnegie Institute of Science as a Carnegie Postdoctoral Fellow in 1996, where he continued to work on extraterrestrial materials including interplanetary dust particles and meteorites. From 1998 to 2002, he worked on the NEAR-Shoemaker mission, leading data analysis for the X-ray spectrometer aboard the spacecraft. During this time, he began working at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. In 2001, he obtained a position back at the Carnegie Institute of Science, where he remains working today as a staff scientist. The following year, asteroid 5992 (1981 DZ) was named after him by the International Astronomical Union.

Nittler is a member of the Meteoritical Society, the American Astronomical Society, and the American Geophysical Union. In 2001, he was awarded with the Meteoritical Society's Nier Prize, an award given to outstanding young researchers in meteoritics.