Orville Frank Tuttle

Orville Frank Tuttle with Norman Levi Bowen (left)

Orville Frank Tuttle , called Frank Tuttle, (born June 25, 1916 in Olean (New York) , † December 13, 1983 in Tucson ) was an American mineralogist, geochemist and petrographer. He was a pioneer in the development of apparatus for experimental petrography.

After high school graduation in Smethport ( Pennsylvania ) he worked on oil fields and studied at the Pennsylvania State College Geology with a bachelor's degree in 1939 and a master's degree in 1940. He then studied for a doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , which by the Second World War was interrupted, in which he was engaged in war-important research (crystal growth and characterization). In 1948 he received his doctorate from MIT. In 1947 he began working with Norman L. Bowen at the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution in Washington in experimental petrography. There he invented the Tuttle Press and the Tuttle Bomb (a high pressure chamber), which were widely used in experimental petrography. Together with Bowen, he particularly researched the formation of granite . In 1953 he became professor of geochemistry at Pennsylvania State University . In 1959 he became dean of the College of Mineral Industries there. In 1960 he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in the early stages. In 1965 he moved to Stanford University , where he took a leave of absence due to illness in 1967 and formally resigned in 1971. He moved to Tucson with his wife. In 1977 he was also diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and moved to a nursing home.

In 1952 he received the Mineralogical Society of America Award, in 1975 the Roebling Medal and in 1967 the Arthur L. Day Medal . He was a foreign member of the Geological Society of London and from 1968 a member of the National Academy of Sciences .

He had been married to Dawn Hardes since 1941 and had two daughters.

literature

• WC Luth: Memorial of Orville Frank Tuttle in: American Mineralogist, 72, 1987, pp. 1020-1022