Quick Search:    advanced search

GSW Home   GeoRef Home   My GSW Alerts   Contact GSW   About GSW   Journals List   Help

This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Search for Related Content

2001 Mineralogical Society Schlumberger Medal

	Presentation by the President, Dr David Morgan, to Dr Tim Holland, at the Annual Winter Conference Dinner, 8 January 2002

 
The Schlumberger Medal recognizes scientific excellence in mineralogy and its applications. It is my great pleasure to present this to you tonight, Dr Tim Holland, for your outstanding work in the gathering, calculation and application of a consistent set of thermodynamic data, generally referred to as THERMOCALC, and the application of this to evaluate and predict phase relationships in complex natural systems. To appreciate the originality of your research, it is essential to stress ‘consistent set of thermodynamic data’ and ‘complex natural systems’ in the previous sentence. Your work has not just been to apply thermodynamics to mineral data, but to build an approach to extracting the themodynamic data so that it may be applied in a rigorous and self-consistent manner across the extremely wide and complex range of natural mineral phenomena. This has been a monumental task, involving much originality of approach and built on an excellent knowledge of crystal chemistry. It incorporates, for example, explicit development of activity coefficient relationships for the complex solid solutions of common minerals, and careful statistical analysis of errors (so that the ‘robustness’ of calculations may be evaluated). Much of this work has been carried out in close collaboration with Roger Powell, and it is fitting that you are presenting a joint paper here at the Derby meeting.

You studied at Keeble College, Oxford, gaining the Burdett-Coutts prize in 1974 for the best Geology degree, and remained there for your PhD. This was on structural and metamorphic studies of eclogites and associated rocks in the central Tauern region of the Eastern Alps, and determining the stability relationships between mineral phases in these rocks . . . [Full Text of this Article]