Acceptance of the Society of Economic Geologists Silver Medal for 2012

Abstract

President Arribas, colleagues, friends, ladies, and gentlemen: It was with great honor, and may I add totally unexpectedly, that I received notification of my selection as the recipient of the SEG Silver Medal for 2012. My initial reaction assumed it was a mistake; indeed, past-President Lluis Fontbote can confirm that I thought the letter had been addressed to the wrong person. My concerns were definitely confirmed when, after a quick scan of previous recipients, I could not even imagine my name having the same stature as some of the world’s best researchers and industry professionals. Little can I add to the excellent citation by Dick, whom I have had the privilege to know and learn from for more than a quarter century. Maybe I could say that I came to know about geology by accident or simply luck, when in the summer prior to my last year at high school, while vacationing in the island of Chiloe in southern Chile, I met a group of geologists on their way to conduct regional mapping in Aysen, even farther south. Needless to say, much of the conversation concerned fossils and volcanoes, and that plate tectonics was the cause of earthquakes and a real thing! I probably understood little of what they said, but enough stayed in the back of my brain so that when school finished I decided to apply to the Facultad de Ciencias Fisicas y Matematicas at Universidad de Chile in Santiago, where geology was taught, and I was accepted. After a tough start, I managed to get over the compulsory courses …