News

Prof. Keizo Yanai, a founder of Antarctic meteorite research, passed away on December 17, 2018, at the age of 77, in Morioka City, Iwate Prefecture, Japan, after several years of declining health. Keizo served many years as a curator at the National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR) of Japan where he collected and allocated thousands of Antarctic meteorites for our community. He was born on July 25, 1941, in Furudono, Fukushima, Japan. He received his B.S. from Akita University and his Ph.D. degree in petrology (Mesozoic igneous rocks) from Tohoku University. More…

Friedrich Begemann passed away on May 11, at the age of 90. Friedrich (‘Fred’) was the director of the Isotope Cosmology Department at the Max-Planck-Institut für Chemie (MPI-C) in Mainz (Germany) from 1978 until his retirement in 1995 and the 1995 recipient of the Meteoritical Society’s Leonard Medal. More…

Dr. Christine Floss died unexpectedly at her home in St. Louis on April 19, 2018, at age 56. She is deeply missed by her family, friends, and colleagues. Christine was a research professor in the Department of Physics and McDonnell Center for Space Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. Christine was a long-time member and a fellow of the Meteoritical Society. She was an expert in the trace-element and isotopic analysis of planetary materials, meteorites, and presolar grains, studying the origin and evolution of the Solar System. She was a gifted and dedicated scientist and mentor, and an extraordinary colleague, collaborator, and friend to many in the cosmochemistry and planetary science community. More…

Those of us who have been in the Society more than 10 years will remember Ursula Marvin as a vibrant and enthusiastic member of the society who loved what she did and enjoyed the friendships it brought her (Fig. 1). She was one of the first researchers to discuss the Allende meteorite and its fascinating refractory inclusions, and she made important contributions to the study of lunar samples and to collecting and describing Antarctic meteorites. She also made unique contributions to recording the history of The Meteoritical Society and to the history of meteorite research. Ursula passed away on February 12th, 2018, at the age of 96. More…

Bob Clayton passed away on Dec. 30, 2017, after several years of declining health at his home in Michigan City, Indiana, surrounded by family. Bob was the Meteoritical Society’s 1982 Leonard Medalist. He was born on March 20, 1930, in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Queen’s University, Ontario, and his Ph.D. from Caltech (1955) mentored by Samuel Epstein. He joined the Chemistry Department and the Enrico Fermi Institute (1958), and then the newly founded Department of Geophysical Sciences (1961) at The University of Chicago. He was the Enrico Fermi Distinguished Service Professor until he retired in 2001, remaining active in emeritus status until about 2014. More…

Elmar K. Jessberger passed away on November 29, 2017, at the age of 74. Elmar was a Fellow of The Meteoritical Society since 1994 and chairman of the Leonard Medal Committee from 2001 to 2002. He was organizer of the Society’s 66th annual meeting 2003 in Münster. Main belt asteroid 16231 Jessberger, discovered in 2000, was named after him in 2005. More…

Anyone with an interest in meteorites either as a collector or researcher knows the name, Frederick Charles Leonard (1896–1960). Leonard was an academically trained astrophysicist, receiving his Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of California at Berkeley in 1921. As a promising young astrophysicist, there was not the slightest hint that he held any interest in meteorites. Yet, meteoritics was to totally consume him in his future. Ten years after he accepted a teaching appointment in the Mathematics Department at UCLA he would organize UCLA's Department of Astronomy. Leonard's exceptional organizational skills would come to bear two years later by founding The Society for Research on Meteorites, the first name of the Meteoritical Society. In 1933 he would become its first president and would carry the task of Editor of the Society's journal for the next 25 years. As a former student of Frederick C. Leonard, I would like to share some remembrances of this extraordinary man. More…

Gerald Rowland passed away on September 19, 2017 at the age of 89. He was born August 13, 1928 in Whittier, California, and he attended the University of California, Los Angeles receiving a B.S. in mathematics in 1950. In order to meet the requirements of his undergraduate teaching minor he needed an upper division science course, and he took a course in astronomy from Frederick C. Leonard, my father. When another student subsequently dropped out of a field trip to the Barringer Meteorite Crater Gerald took his place. He became my father's research assistant, co-authoring "A Catalogue of the Leonard Collection of Meteorites" published in Contributions of the Meteoritical Society in 1951. More…

Lawrence “Larry” A. Taylor was born in Paterson, New Jersey, on 14 September, 1938. He grew up in Port Jervis, New York, over a bar owned by his father. His formative years were to set the scene for the way he lived his life. At the beginning of his senior year at high school he was a passenger in a car that was involved in a bad accident that threw Larry from the car and left him to spend 10 months in hospital. Despite having missed most of his last year at high school, Larry insisted on taking his final exams – and passed! Having graduated high school he started his higher education in night school at Orange County Community College, Middletown, NY. More…

Fara Lindsay, an astute petrologist, inspiring teacher, and talented dancer, died on June 14, 2017 from cancer. A native of Bayonne, NJ, she received a B.A. from SUNY, Brockport in 1983 with a concentration in movement analysis and went on to dance professionally with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and in Europe with the Broadway Musical Company. More…