Max Hey

Max Hutchinson Hey (born March 11, 1904 in Leyland, Lancashire , † January 24, 1984 ) was a British mineralogist , chemist and crystallographer.

Life

Hey went to school in Leyland and Manchester and got an early interest in chemistry. He studied chemistry and crystallography at Oxford University with a bachelor's degree in 1925. After working as a chemist in state laboratories and at the patent office, he became Assistant Keeper 2nd class at the British Museum in the Mineralogy Department in 1928, responsible for chemical analyzes (simultaneously was Frederick Allan Bannister set to build the X-ray crystallography). He was then working under the keeper Leonard James Spencer , who had just succeeded George Thurland Prior . There he first examined the then little understood zeolites . In 1937 he received a D.Sc. (PhD) and became Assistant Keeper 1st Class. He further systematically examined the chemical composition of the minerals in the collection, partly in collaboration with the X-ray crystallographer Bannister (both received the Lyell Fund of the Geological Society of London in 1943). For this he developed methods for microchemical analyzes under the microscope. He last lived in Tilehurst near Reading . In 1952 he became Senior Principal Scientific Officer and in 1954 he was briefly acting keeper for mineralogy until the appointment of Gordon Frank Claringbull as keeper (previously Bannister Keeper was 1952/53). In 1969 he retired.

In 1950 he published the first edition of his Index of Mineral Species arranged chemically (Chemical Index of Minerals, also called Hey Index for short ). His revision of the prior museum's meteorite catalog resulted from his chemical investigations into meteorites. He also dealt with crystallography in the narrower sense and, after the death of Thomas Vipond Barker (1881–1931), continued work on his Barker Index of Crystals (published 1951, 1956, 1963). To do this, he also made extensive mathematical calculations, for which he had a preference. He also turned to statistics and developed his own statistical methods.

1956 to 1980 he was editor of Mineralogical Magazine. In 1966 he received the Roebling Medal and since 1961 he has been a Fellow of the Mineralogical Society of America .

The Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland has awarded the Max Hey Medal, named in his honor, to young scientists since 1993. 1970 to 1972 he was President of the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain.

The mineral Heyite was named in his honor in 1973. Hey was a member of the UK section of the International Mineral Names Commission.

literature

• Peter Embrey, Obituary in Mineralogical Magazine, Volume 49, 1985, p. 1, PDF (1.26 MB; English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Max Hey Medal
2. ↑ Mindat