I thank the Mineralogical Association of Canada
for honoring me with the Berry Medal for significant contributions
to the Association. Every person and their accomplishments are the
net result of their experiences and opportunities, so I would like
to tell my story and thank those involved.
I was born in the
Shilo Army Camp near Brandon Manitoba, home of hookers and hockey
players. My mom was a goalie. When my dad was discharged from the
Army, he became a construction worker and we moved out to northern
British Columbia, where he eventually became a Labour Union leader.
We moved around a lot, and lived in some remote places, often eating
moose or grizzly that my dad hunted. In one of these places, I met
an old prospector who, if I visited him, would give me crystals from
out of a bucket that he kept on his front porch. My parents
divorced, and I moved with my mom and sisters to the welfare
projects in Windsor, Ontario. In Windsor, I had the best mineral
collection of any kid on the block, and this perhaps provided the
inspiration to get me started in my life-long interest in minerals
and mineral collecting.
I left home at the age of 14 and
started hitchhiking and hopping trains in order to get back to
British Columbia to see my dad. I ended up finishing my high school
in Nanaimo, B.C., and enrolled at U.B.C. Although Geology was the
carrot that I chased to become the first member of my family to ever
go to college, I was not excited by my introductory course, and
consequently I changed my major to mathematics. It was difficult to
attend school every year because I would get these high- paying
summer jobs in construction in the middle of nowhere, and I would
stay till the job played out. I graduated with my degree at the age
of 30. In between starting and ending university, I also kept up
with my mineral collecting and even tried professional collecting
for a while, learning how to drill and blast rock from Bob Jackson.
During my last year as an undergraduate, I was fortunate to get a
part time job with the late Joe Nagel, the curator of the U.B.C.
mineral museum. Joe encouraged me to pursue a graduate degree and
also helped me find a summer job with Gary Ansell at the Geological
Survey of Canada, working on the national mineral collection.
Graduate school was in Blacksburg at Virginia Tech, where I
studied with Jerry Gibbs and Monte Boisen. The mix of minerals and
math provided by these two wonderful scientists provided the best
education I could have hoped for. They perhaps got more than they
bargained for, and had to spend a great deal of effort to polish my
rough edges. I consider Monte and Jerry to be two of my best
friends. My graduate research involved obtaining a large number of
crystal-structure datasets from the literature. I started collecting
these datasets and studying the information that could be obtained
from them. I was surprised and appalled at how many errors the
published tables contained and how carelessly prepared the
manuscripts must have been. My best friend in grad school and best
man at my wedding was Kurt Bartelmehs. In 1988, he and I decided to
write some computer graphics programs to visualize the
crystal-structure data in order to help us in our research and to
help teach mineralogy labs. Together, we collected a large number of
datasets and created some significant software for analyzing and
visualizing the data.
I had the opportunity to do both a
pre-doc and a post-doc at the Geophysical Lab with Bob Hazen, Larry
Finger, Charlie Prewitt and Hexiong Yang. Bob is a good friend and
has provided me with practical, sound advice that includes “Always
keep the diffractometer running!” and “Never shut your office door
when a female student is inside”. Larry taught me not to let the
instruments limit my ideas, and Charlie is the wise sage who knows
everything. Yang is a best friend; we completed post-docs together
and really enjoyed working together.
While I was at my
post-doc, I went to the NATO feldspar meeting in Edinburgh and had
the chance to sit next to Bob Martin, editor of The Canadian
Mineralogist, while on a bus tour. If I recollect the events
correctly, we got to talking about crystal-structure datasets and I
told him about the problems with data in the literature and he asked
me if I would check some of the data about to be published in his
journal. The very first dataset that he gave me had absolutely
nothing to do with the contents of the paper with which it was being
published! It was amazing to both of us that we would see this
happen in the proof stage of a paper and further emphasized my
concern about the quality of published crystal-structure data. Soon
I was given the title of Technical Editor (Structures) of The
Canadian Mineralogist, and I now examine each dataset prior to
publication. Bob Martin is a consummate editor who is always looking
for ways to improve his journal and thus improve the quality of
scientific communication. In contrast, it was the position of the
editors of the American Mineralogist that the quality of data was
the sole responsibility of the authors and not the journal. This
position changed once Rich Reeder was editor, and then I began to
check the crystal-structure data for American Mineralogist as well.
Given that I was now collecting data that had been carefully
checked, I decided to make these datasets available to the general
public. I was then an assistant professor at the University of
Arizona, and needed to come up with funding opportunities.
Fortunately for me, the National Science Foundation began a program
to financially support Information Technology, and I have been
awarded funding to build and maintain a mineralogical
crystal-structure database on the Internet. It will be accessible
through the web pages of the Mineralogical Association of Canada and
the Mineralogical Society of America and will contain the checked
crystal-structure data for every structure published in American
Mineralogist and The Canadian Mineralogist. Now with the Berry Medal
pinned on my chest and grant money burning a hole in my pocket,
Arizona is promoting me to associate professor this summer.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge the support of my
family. I met my wonderful wife, Dori, during graduate school. We
fell in love while playing volleyball, and she has been a source of
encouragement and inspiration since then. When I failed my prelims,
she wanted to burn her diploma. Together, we have created a happy
family with two very fun boys, Gordie and Clay. I thank them for
their love.
Robert T. Downs
Department of Geosciences,
University of Arizona
Tucson Arizona 85721-0077, U.S.A.