Harold Helgeson

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Harold C. Helgeson (born November 13, 1931 in Minneapolis , † May 28, 2007 in Berkeley (California) ) was an American geochemist.

Helgeson grew up in St. Paul and studied geology at Michigan State University with a bachelor's degree in 1953. He then prospected uranium for a year for Technical Mine Consultants in Canada before serving two years as an aerial survey officer in the Korean War, where he was in Wiesbaden was stationed. He then worked for four years in geological prospecting in South Africa for the Anglo-American Corporation (diamond search for De Beers in Namibia, mining geologist at the President Steyn Gold Mine in Welkom and the Nkana Copper Mine in Kitwe in Zambia). In 1959 he was back in the USA and studied geochemistry at Harvard University with a doctorate under Robert M. Garrels in 1962. His dissertation became a book on theoretical geochemistry of the formation of hydrothermal ore deposits at high temperatures, which was published in 1964. He was briefly at Shell Development in Houston, where he dealt with geothermal energy, and from 1965 assistant professor at Northwestern University , where he worked again with Garrels and with him and Fred T. Mackenzie basic theoretical work on the hydrothermal interaction in rocks and high temperatures and pressures. He managed to develop a consistent model that allowed predictions over a wide range of pressures and temperatures. He also expanded this for organic (biological) substances (with applications in the oil industry but also on questions of the origin of life) when he became a professor at Berkeley in 1970. He also developed software for this with his employees.

With his work he was a pioneer in theoretical geochemistry. In his last work he put forward a new theory of the formation of oil deposits, according to which the quantities extracted are only part of much larger, deeper reservoirs. His codes were used, among others, by the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory for the simulation of uranium transport in groundwater in the Yucca Flat repository project.

In 1988 he received the VM Goldschmidt Award and in 2004 the Urey Award .

He was a passionate sailor and lived in San Francisco.

Fonts

  • Complexing and hydrothermal ore deposition, Pergamon Press 1964
  • Evaluation of irreversible reactions in geochemical processes involving minerals and aequous solutions I: Thermodynamic relations, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, Volume 32, 1968, pp. 853-877
  • Thermodynamics of hydrothermal systems at elevated temperatures and pressures, American Journal of Science, Volume 267, 1969, pp. 729-804
  • A chemical and thermodynamic model of ore deposition in hydrothermal systems, Mineralogical Society of America Special Paper 3, 1968, pp. 15-186
  • Prediction of the thermodynamic properties of electrolytes at high pressures and temperatures, Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Volume 13/14, 1981, pp. 1-177
  • with Dimitri Sverjensky, Everett L. Shock: Prediction of the thermodynamic properties of aqueous metal complexes to 1000 C and 5 kb, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, Volume 61, 1997, pp. 1359-1412
  • with Laurent Richard: Calculation of the thermodynamic properties at elevated temperatures and pressures of saturated and aromatic high molecular weight solid and liquid hydrocarbons in kerogen, bitumen, petroleum, and other organic matter of biogeochemical interest, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, Volume 62, 1998, Pp. 3591-3636

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Helgeson, McKenzie, Denis L. Norton, Laurent Richard, Alexandra M. Schmitt, A chemical and thermodynamic model of oil generation in hydrocarbon source rocks, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, Volume 73, 2009, pp. 594-695
personal data
SURNAME Helgeson, Harold
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Helgeson, Harold C.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American geochemist
DATE OF BIRTH November 13, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Minneapolis , Minnesota , United States
DATE OF DEATH May 28, 2007
Place of death Berkeley , California , United States