News

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…

On July 7, 2016, Andrei Valerievich Ivanov passed away after a struggle with cancer. Andrei was our friend and colleague, a distinguished scientist, Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences, member of the Meteoritical Society, and a leading researcher at the Vernadsky Institute’s Laboratory of Meteoritics. More…

Gerald J. Wasserburg, 1927-2016 Gerald J. Wasserburg (aka Jerry) passed away on June 13, at the age of 89. Jerry Wasserburg was an icon (better: a giant) in the meteoritics and planetary science community, a relentless figure in the Apollo Program and influential in the field of isotope geochemistry. He served as President of The Society (1987-1988) and was awarded the Society’s Leonard Medal in 1975. At the time of his death, he was the John D. MacArthur Professor of Geology and Geophysics, Emeritus, at the California Institute of Technology. More…

Roy S. Clarke, Jr., Emeritus Curator in the Dept. of Mineral Sciences at the Smithsonian Institution, passed away on April 1, 2016, at the age of 91. More…

Heinrich Wänke passed away on November 21, at the age of 87. Heinrich Wänke was well known for his work in Cosmo- and Geochemistry, which included studies on meteorites, Moon rocks, Martian meteorites and Earth mantle rocks. His research has had and continues to have a strong influence on present work on the formation and evolution of the terrestrial planets. More…