Presentation of the Mineralogical Society of America Award for 2015 to Nicholas J. Tosca

Abstract

In preparing this introduction, I looked at the list of former recipients of the MSA Award (http://www.minsocam.org/msa/awards/MSA_Award.html) and was struck by how many of the towering lights in our field are on that list. The rules demand that they receive their awards within just a few years of their Ph.D., and the inevitable conclusion is that the MSA Award must be one of the world’s greatest predictors of sustained scientific excellence! I am confident that this year’s selection will further enhance the Award’s reputation on that front and so, President Shirey, MSA members and guests, it is both an honor and pleasure to introduce this year’s Mineralogical Society of America Awardee, Nick Tosca. Nick came to Stony Brook after completing undergraduate studies at SUNY Albany, where he was mentored (and highly recommended) by John Delano. I believe he arrived expecting to start with a Masters on rare earth elements in sedimentary rocks, but I had just received a NASA Cosmochemistry grant to set up a low-temperature experimental lab designed to test some of the predictions about martian sedimentary mineralogy arising from the Pathfinder mission. Although I knew very little about how to perform experiments, I had already talked Joel Hurowitz—who indeed had just completed a Masters on REE in sedimentary rocks—into jumping off the planetary science cliff with me for his Ph.D., and Nick arrived just in time to bolster …