Presentation of the Mineralogical Society of America Award for 2005 to Tiziana Boffa-Ballaran

Abstract

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: It was a pleasant surprise when Tiziana asked me to introduce her as the recipient of the MSA award for 2005, as she has worked with many excellent mineralogists and crystallographers who have influenced and guided her career more than I. Indeed, I suspect I have learnt more from Tiziana than she has from me. Like many senior crystallographers, Tiziana comes from a farming background, having grown up in the small village of Sella di Tavigliano on the flanks of the Piemontese Alps in northern Italy. Mineralogists know this area better as the Ivrea zone, and for the eclogites at Monte Mucronne that lie above her home. Despite these mineralogical influences early in her life, Tiziana choose to study chemistry for her undergraduate degree, first at the University of Milan, and then at Pavia. However, when one reads Tiziana’s CV for her undergraduate years one sees the seeds of the two pervasive themes of her subsequent career. First, she won scholarships to spend semesters at other Universities in Europe (Aarhus in Denmark, Aveiro in Portugal, and Wroclaw in Silesia) and so develop scientific collaborations and friendships that cross many international borders. In this sense Tiziana is a representative of the new model of European integration, maintaining her strong regional roots and traditions while developing links that span the continent; her new young family is another product of such collaboration! The other theme that appears in Tiziana’s undergraduate record is thermodynamics of solid solutions, the topic of both her senior thesis and her work in Wroclaw, and it is this theme that formed the basis of the …