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Duncan McKie 1930–1999

Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge

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Duncan McKie

A favourite aphorism of the young McKie was Lord Rutherford’s tripartite division of the Natural Sciences. There was Physics; then there was Chemistry; and the rest was Stamp Collecting. Duncan may never have collected postage stamps, but he seemed to collect almost everything else, and in this he was indulging not mere cumulomania, but an intense interest in most things around him. It was in fact his flair in the collection of rocks and minerals – developed during wartime evacuation to Cornwall and Wales – that became a potent factor setting his life path. This might have availed him little but for his proficiency in Rutherford’s second category, His father, Douglas McKie, had been a regular soldier, who, after severe injury at Passchendaele, turned to Chemistry and later became a distinguished Historian of Science at University College London. Duncan initially followed by taking a degree in Chemistry at UCL; transferring to Cambridge he then read Mineralogy and Petrology. The National Service Act now closing in on him, he opted for a three year stint with the Colonial Service, and so it was that he went as a mineralogist to Tanganyika, for his African adventure.

Duncan returned as a research student to Cambridge in 1957, a seasoned Africa hand with a trunkful of trophies. Pre-eminent amongst these – ex Africa semper aliquid novi – was his new mineral, yoderite. He was not in fact the first to see yoderite – so spectacular a mineral could hardly be missed – but it had previously been identified as dumortierite. Duncan, with the thoroughness that was his hallmark, deduced monoclinic optics . . . [Full Text of this Article]