Clifford Frondel

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Clifford Frondel (born January 8, 1907 in New York City , † November 12, 2002 in Winchester (Massachusetts) ) was an American mineralogist .

Live and act

Frondel grew up in Queens and was introduced to mineralogy by his high school teacher in Flushing. He studied mining and geology at the Colorado School of Mines (graduated in 1929) and at Columbia University (master's degree in 1936). In 1939 he received his doctorate from Martin J. Buerger at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology .

He was Professor and Curator of Mineralogy at the Mineralogical Museum at Harvard University since 1949 .

Frondel published over 200 papers and discovered 48 new mineral species (and withdrew 50 more in connection with his revision of Dana's System of Mineralogy ).

He was also involved in applied research, developing quartz oscillators for walkie talkies for the US Army Signal Corps during World War II , being in Great Britain from 1942 to 1943 and research director at Reeves Sound Laboratories from 1943 to 1945. He worked at Harvard with the urologist Edwin L. Prien on methods to better recognize kidney stones on X-rays (and published with Prien on bladder stones) and was involved in the development of spectrographic-chemical methods for the detection of art forgeries. With Linde Air Products Corp. he worked on methods of artificial production of rubies and sapphires , and he dealt with the dangers and mineralogy of asbestos . In the 1940s to 1951 he undertook extensive investigations into the occurrence of uranium and thorium minerals and of scandium on behalf of the Atomic Energy Commission and the US Geological Survey. In 1961 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina .

From 1964, Frondel was involved in planning the collection of rock samples from the moon as part of a commission of the National Academy of Sciences. In 1969 he was personally involved in the opening of the first sample box of lunar rocks of the Apollo 11 mission and also in the later samples of manned moon landings, where he was initially quarantined with other scientists.

From 1965 to 1969 he was head of the Faculty of Geosciences. In 1977 he retired.

With Charles Palache and Harry Berman he edited three volumes of the 7th edition of Dana's System of Mineralogy .

He was married to the mineralogist Judith Weiss for the second time in 1949 and had two daughters from his first and second marriage.

Honors and memberships

In 1949 Frondel was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1958 he received the Friedrich Becke Medal , in 1969 the Emanuel Boricky Medal from the Charles University in Prague and in 1964 the Roebling Medal and the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Colorado School of Mines. He was an honorary member of the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland . He had been a member of the Accademia dei Lincei since 1963 .

The minerals cliffordite and frondelite are named after him.

Fonts

  • Systematic mineralogy of Uranium and Thorium . United States Government Printing Office , Washington DC 1958
  • with Daphne Riska, Judith Weiss Frondel: X-ray powder data for uranium and thorium minerals . Washington DC 1956
  • The minerals of Franklin and Sterling Hill, a checklist . Wiley / Interscience, 1972
  • with H. Catherine W. Skinner, Malcolm Ross: Asbestos and other fibrous materials: mineralogy, crystal chemistry, and health effects . Oxford University Press, 1988

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Frondel, Prien: Studies in urolithiasis; the composition of urinary calculi . In: The Journal of Urology , Volume 57, 1947, pp. 949-994. Carbonate-apatite and hydroxylapatite in urinary calculi . In: Science , Volume 95, 1942, p. 431
  2. ↑ Published for example in: C. Frondel, C. Klein, J. Ito, JC Drake: Mineralogy and composition of lunar fines and selected rocks . In: Science , Volume 167, 1970, PMID 17781544 , pp. 681-683.
  3. ^ Richard V. Gaines: Cliffordite - a new tellurite mineral from Moctezuma, Sonora, Mexico . (PDF; 314.8 kB) In: American Mineralogist , Volume 54 (1969), pp. 697-701
  4. ↑ Marie Luise Lindberg: Frondelite and the frondelite-rockbridge series . (PDF; 556.3 kB) In: American Mineralogist , Volume 34 (1949), pp. 541-549
personal data
SURNAME Frondel, Clifford
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American mineralogist
DATE OF BIRTH January 8, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH November 12, 2002
Place of death Winchester