MinerSoc - Elements Magazine

Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Irelandwww.minersoc.org2008 in ReviewAs another year in the life of the Society comes to an end, it is worthreflecting on the year that has passed, on the aspects of the Societythat worked well, and on those which can be improved upon.This year, the Geochemistry ofthe Earth’s Surface meeting(GES8), held in London duringAugust, was a resounding success.Under the leadership ofMark Hodson, we welcomed 145scientists to London for a weekfor a varied and fascinating programmeof talks and posters.The feedback was hugely positive,and many delegates arealready warming up for the nextevent (GES9) to be held inBoulder, Colorado, USA, underthe stewardship of SuzanneAnderson. The ability of theSociety’s staff to handle much ofthe conference administration,including registration, financialmanagement, website, abstractvolumeproduction, etc., meantthat the convenors could get onwith the job of organizing thebest scientific event possible.Hallimond Lecturer Prof. Julian Gale(right) receives the formal certificatefrom Society President Prof. MichaelCarpenter at the GES8 meeting.The Society has ramped up itsinvolvement in conferences, andnext year we will help to runthree meetings, including thoseof some of its constituent SpecialInterest Groups. We are happy tohelp and advise in the runningof conferences of a mineralogical/geochemical nature. Contact KevinMurphy (kevin@minersoc.org)for more information.We have now launched theOnline-First (GeoScienceWorld)/Fast-Track (Ingenta) services forMineralogical Magazine and ClayMinerals. This means that yourpaper will now be publishedonline shortly after it isaccepted, rather than having towait for the next full issue to beready. This can mean a differenceof several months in somecases. The online edition will bepublished complete with finalpage numbers and so will befully ‘citable’.The editors of MineralogicalMagazine, in particular MarkWelch, have worked very hardthis year to get the journal backon track, and we hope that bythe time you read this, we shallbe there or thereabouts. A temporaryblip in the paper flow ledto a delay in publication whichpersisted throughout 2008. Onthe positive side, the journal’simpact factor increased to >1.2,its highest for a couple of years.We hope to build on that for2009.Our free student membershipshave been very popular. Elementsis universally popular amongstEarth scientists, and the opportunityto receive copies for a fullyear is snapped up eagerly bystudents, 135 of them this year.The Mineralogical Society is theonly society offering free subscriptionsto Elements to students,so if you, as a student, wouldlike to sign up for a year, pleasecontact info@minersoc.org orcomplete the online membershipapplication form which you canfind at www.minersoc.org. Atthe end of your free year, youwill then be invited to pay £10,a bargain price for membershipin the Society in subsequentyears, and you will be offered theopportunity to apply for travelgrants of up to £500 and invitedto attend conferences at a muchreducedrate of registration (freein many cases). The MinSoc is avery student-friendly organization,and we welcome input fromstudents. Please contact KevinMurphy (kevin@minersoc.org)with ideas and suggestions forevents or services which youthink would benefit students.In December 2008 we held ajoint meeting with the RussellSociety (www.russellsoc.org) andGem-A (www.gem-A.info):‘Nature’s Treasures: Minerals andGems’. There were 100 delegates,most of whom had not attendeda Mineralogical Society event inthe past. A morning of rapid-firetalks on a range of mineralogical/gemmologicaltopics waspresented, with emphasis oninformation for the non-specialistand with high visualimpact. This was achieved admirablyby all of the speakers.Lunch was followed by a smalldisplay on mineralogical/photographic/gemmologicaltopics. Wehope to repeat this event incoming years, as it is an idealway to reach out to non-specialistsin our subject, and to invitethem to contribute to the societyand to partake in what it has tooffer. See report on page 427.The Mineralogical Societystudent award winnersfor 2007/2008• Jalal Al-Hinaai, Cardiff University• James Banyard, University of Exeterin Cornwall• Nicola Clark, University of Leicester• Elizabeth Cramer, Universityof Liverpool• Joan D’Arcy, University CollegeDublin• Mitchall D’Arcy, Imperial CollegeLondon• Carol Dempsey, National Universityof Ireland, Galway• George Evans, Universityof Reading• Adam Grant, University of Brighton• Caroline Jones, Keele University• Paula Keogh, Trinity College• Ericka Lukasevica, Universityof Aberdeen• D.A. Neave, University of Cambridge• Constantina Pierides, Universityof London• Alehni Claire Simmonds,University of Leeds• David Simpson, Universityof Manchester• Kerrie Taylor-Jones, Universityof EdinburghUnlisted institutions in GreatBritain and Ireland are invitedto forward the name of their awardwinners to Martin Hughes(admin@minersoc.org).Elements 416December 2008

The Collins Medal – A New Society AwardAt its meeting in March 2008, the Society’sCouncil finalized an agreement, initiated in2007, to establish a new medal, named afterJoseph Henry Collins (1841–1916), miningengineer, mineralogist and geologist, and oneof the founding members of the Society.The Collins Medal will be awarded annuallyto a scientist who, during a long and activecareer, has made an outstanding contributionto pure or applied aspects of mineralsciences and associated studies. Publications,teaching, outreach and other activitiesleading to the promotion of mineral sciences,in the broadest sense, will be taken intoaccount in making the award. Nominees donot have to be members of the MineralogicalSociety or nationals of Great Britain andIreland.Nominations for the first award of this medalshould be made before 30 April 2009. The firstpresentation will take place at the annualSociety meeting in 2010. For further details seewww.minersoc.org/pages/awards/awards.html.Collins was one of the founding members ofthe Society, and indeed, the minutes of thefirst meeting, chaired by the President, H. C.Sorby, suggest that the setting up of theSociety was largely due to his efforts andenthusiasm. In the Society’s early years,Collins acted as both Secretary and as Editorof the Society’s journal, both of which postshe relinquished in order to take up anappointment with Rio Tinto Mines in Spainwhere he became the chief chemist andmetallurgist.Not content with having founded theMineralogical Society, he became involvedin the founding of the Institution of Miningand Metallurgy, of which he was Vice-President at the time of its formation in 1892.Collins was at one time Secretary and, later,President of the three principal learned societiesin Cornwall – the Royal GeologicalSociety of Cornwall, the Royal Institution ofCornwall and the Royal Cornwall PolytechnicSociety. He received the Henwood GoldMedal from the Royal Institution of Cornwalland the Bolitho Gold Medal from the RoyalGeological Society of Cornwall. He waselected an Honorary Member of the ImperialMineralogical Society of St. Petersburg. Healso had terms of office as President of theMineralogical Society and of the Institutionof Mining and Metallurgy.Collins made an extraordinary contributionto the development and study of theCornubian mining region and to the chinaclay industry. He also harboured a keen interestin systematic mineralogy. In a paperfrom 1878 he said, “My own opinion is, thathaving established our species as definitely aspossible, and having broadly arranged thesespecies in a small number of primary classesaccording to the general character of theirchemical constitution, it will be better inestablishing the minor subdivisions or groupsto give considerable weight to external characters.We shall thus sufficiently recognizethese characters, and shall at the same timegive a convenient practical aspect to our sciencewithout offending any reasonable scientificsusceptibility.” Read the full paper at www.minersoc.org/pages/Archive-MM/Volume_2/2-9-65.pdf. He was also a regular publisheron the subject of clays; indeed he pioneeredexploration for china clay in the St. Austellarea. In 1887, Collins read a paper on kaolinite,including the arguments for and againstconsidering clays to be minerals at all!In 2005, a plaque in honour of Joseph HenryCollins was unveiled at Charlestown ParishChurch, Cornwall. It is fitting that this newaward of the Society should be named inhonour of such an important founding fatherof our Society and our discipline.A more complete history of the life of JosephHenry Collins, penned by Colin M. Bristow,is available on the Society’s website at www.minersoc.org/pages/msinfo/collins.html,where the original paper by Dr Bristow isreproduced with permission from the Newsletterof the St. Austell China Clay Museum. TheSociety also acknowledges Dr Bristow’s provisionof photographic and other material usedin the production of the medal.Meeting AnnouncementNew Views of the Earth’s InteriorMineral Physics Group, in conjunction withthe British Geophysical Association12–13 February 2009Burlington House, LondonThis cross-disciplinary meeting is organised by the British GeophysicalAssociation and the Mineral Physics Group of the Mineralogical Societyof Great Britain and Ireland. The aim is to present new developmentson the structure, composition, dynamics and evolution of all areas ofthe Earth’s interior. This includes subduction zones, the transitionzone, the lower mantle and D’’, and the Earth’s inner and outer core.Scientists who have agreed to give presentations are:• Dr Arwen Deuss (Cambridge, UK)• Prof. Guillaume Fiquet (Université Pierre et Marie Curie Paris 6,Université Denis Diderot Paris 7, Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris)• Dr Dan Frost (BGI)• Prof. Alex Halliday (Oxford, UK)• Prof. Thorne Lay (University of California Santa Cruz, USA)• Dr Carolina Lithgow-Bertelloni (UCL, UK)• Prof. Graham Pearson (Durham, UK)• Prof. Andreas Rietbrock (Liverpool, UK)• Prof. Paul Tackley (ETH, Switzerland)• Dr Lidunka Vočadlo (UCL, UK)• Prof. Don Weidner (SUNY-Stony Brook, USA)• Dr Sebastian Rost, who will also present the Bullerwell Lecture(of the British Geophysical Association) at this meetingAbstracts for posters and oral presentations are now invited. Go towww.minersoc.org/pages/groups/minphys/minphys.html for furtherinformation, to register, and to submit an abstract. The meetingconvenor is Prof. J. Brodholt, Department of Geology, University CollegeLondon, London WC1E 6BT, UK (j.brodholt@ucl.ac.uk).Elements 417December 2008