Acceptance of the Society of Economic Geologists Ralph W. Marsden Award for 2008

Abstract

Thank you, Peter. President Thompson, fellows, members, guests, and friends of the Society: This award brings to mind a 50-year association with the Society beginning in 1959, when I realized as a junior at Dartmouth College that I was interested in ore deposits. A publication called Economic Geology had caught my attention and a subscription seemed like a good idea. The geology department faculty at Dartmouth, with John Lyons, Dick Stoiber, Andy McNair, and Linc Page, urged me to try graduate school at the University of Arizona, where Bill Lacy, Spence Titley, and Tom Mitcham continued the “work in progress.” An Arizona M.S. degree was followed by five years of work guided by Kenyon Richard and Harold Courtright at Asarco and then Phil Jenney with West Range, who stand among the great ore finders anywhere. In 1966 I returned to Arizona to study for a Ph.D. degree with Spence Titley, who was finishing his first book on porphyry copper deposits. John Guilbert and T. S. Lovering had just joined the department, along with a group of outstanding graduate students. That experience pretty much hooked me on ore deposit science and applications, and in 1971 I rejoined Asarco. Harold Courtright set the hook permanently in …