James Burleigh Thompson

James Burleigh Thompson Jr. , called Jim Thompson (born November 20, 1921 in Calais , Maine , † November 15, 2011 in Lexington , Massachusetts ) was an American mineralogist , geologist and petrologist . He was a professor at Harvard University .

Thompson grew up in Maine and New York (Lee) and studied geology at Dartmouth College with a bachelor's degree in 1942. After military service in World War II as a meteorologist with the US Army Air Force until 1946 sat he graduated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology continued with his doctorate in 1950. From 1949 he was an instructor in petrology at Harvard University as the successor to Jesper Larsen, became an assistant professor in 1950 and was given a full professorship in 1960. In 1977 he became Sturgis Hooper Professor of Geology. In 1992 he retired.

In 1963 he was visiting professor at the University of Bern, from 1988 to 1992 he taught part-time at Dartmouth College, 1977/78 he was visiting professor at ETH Zurich, 1991 at Arizona State University and 1985/86 visiting scientist at the US Geological Survey.

At Harvard, he worked closely with Marland Billings and Francis Birch . In 1954 he proposed large thrusts such as in the Alps to explain the tectonics of the northern Appalachians , which was considered a radical idea at the time but was confirmed by his students (with Billings over the course of time he supervised 26 doctoral students in geology, most of whom deal with the New England Basement Mountains ).

One of his most famous works in 1955 was the application of classical thermodynamics by Josiah Willard Gibbs to metamorphic rocks with liquids. In 1957 he introduced graphic projection techniques into the analysis of multi-component rocks. Later he dealt experimentally and theoretically with silicates. In 1978 he published a paper on the structure of silicates from chemically different modules (such as amphiboles ).

In 1964 he received the Arthur L. Day Medal , in 1978 the Roebling Medal and in 1985 the VM Goldschmidt Award . He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences (1967). In 1976 he was a Fairchild Scholar at Caltech. 1967/68 he was President of the Mineralogical Society of America and 1968/69 of the Geochemical Society .

The mineral jimthompsonite is named after him, a magnesium- and iron-rich silicate in metamorphic rocks that was discovered in Vermont and described in 1977. He had predicted the mineral based on theoretical considerations (as Biopyrol, 1970).

Fonts

• The thermodynamic basis for the mineral facies concept, American Journal of Science, Volume 253, 1955, pp. 65-103
• The graphic analysis of mineral assemblages in pelitic schists, The American Mineralogist, Volume 42, 1957, pp. 842-858
• Biopyriboles and polysomatic series, The American Mineralogist, Vol. 63, 1978, pp. 239-249

Web links

• Obituary, Harvard
• obituary