Donnel Foster Hewett

Donnel Foster Hewett (born June 24, 1881 in Irwin , Pennsylvania , † February 5, 1971 ) was an American geologist and mineralogist .

His father was a mining engineer and manager in the coal industry . He grew up in Washington and Atlanta and studied metallurgy at Lehigh University , where his interest in mineralogy and economic geology arose. As a student he worked as an engineer for the railroad and as a mineral analyst. In 1902 he graduated and from 1903 worked in a test laboratory for the mining industry in Pittsburgh , whose main task was to assess possible ore and mineral deposits for investors. He traveled a lot in the USA, but also in Canada, Mexico, South America and Europe. Among other things, he recognized the great importance of the vanadium deposit in Mina Ragra in Peru. He married in 1909 and studied for two years at Yale University for his doctorate, which did not take place until 1924. However, he passed the necessary test in 1911 and then worked for the US Geological Survey.

First he mapped in the Big Horn Basin in Wyoming . He also became an expert on manganese ores and regularly published about it in the annual reports of the survey on mineral deposits. From 1921 he was based in Goodsprings, Nevada and mapped there and in the Ivanpah Quadrangle (Nevada, California). He investigated manganese deposits in Arizona and Nevada and conducted field studies in Alaska and the Boulder Dam area. In 1933 he investigated the hot springs at Warm Springs, Georgia, in which President Franklin D. Roosevelt had a particular interest because he believed in their healing properties. However, Hewett found that they were fed by rainwater. In 1935 he became head of the metal deposits section of the survey and developed a program for the exploration of strategically important minerals and ores, which became of great importance during World War II. This work during World War II was interrupted by health problems and he had to undergo kidney surgery in 1945. He settled in Pasadena and supervised and advised from there the mineral search of the Geological Survey, for example in the Mojave Desert. In 1949 he was involved in the discovery of another large deposit near Mountain Pass, California, this time for rare earths. At the age of 70, he was supposed to retire in 1951, but this was repealed by a presidential decree. He moved to the headquarters of the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park and devoted himself primarily to the exploration of manganese deposits and their formation. For manganese nodules on the sea floor, he advocated hypogenic formation.

In 1956 he received the Penrose Gold Medal and in 1964 the Penrose Medal . He served on the council of the Geological Society of America and twice its vice-president, and he was president of the Society of Economic Geologists in 1936. In 1937 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and in 1949 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . He was an honorary doctor of Lehigh University and received the Distinguished Service Medal from the US Department of the Interior in 1951.

He first described Orientit . The vanadium minerals hewettite and metahewettite are named in his honor.

Web links

• Richard Jahns, Memorial to Donnel Foster Hewett, Geological Society of America, pdf