Who’s Who in Mineral Names: Robert M. Hazen (b. 1948)

Abstract

Robert Hazen’s interest in Earth materials began with fossils at the age of eight while living in Cleveland, Ohio, but two years later he switched to minerals when his family moved to northern New Jersey. His growing love of minerals resulted from visits to the great Morgan Hall of Gems and Minerals at the American Museum of Natural History. In eighth grade Hazen had Wilfred “Bill” Welsh as his science instructor—the remarkable teacher who had previously taught the famous crystallographer Paul B. Moore several years earlier. Moore named welshite, Ca4[Mg9Sb3 5+] O4[Si6Be3AlFe2 O36], to honor Welsh and wrote in 1974 that “my fascination in minerals began when, aged 12 years, I was inspired by Bill and Mary Welsh, both dedicated school teachers and outstanding amateur mineralogists who brought the world of beautiful and mysterious natural things to the classroom” (Mitchell 1983, p. 26). Welsh gave the young Hazen both specimens and mimeographs of articles on nearby mineral localities. Hazen’s parents took him to famous localities in the area, including the world-renowned Franklin Furnace and Sterling Hill mines in Franklin, New Jersey. Hazen’s father, Dan Francis Hazen, was an electrical engineer who helped design a powerful portable black light to fully appreciate the colorful fluorescence of minerals occurring at Franklin. By the time Hazen graduated from Ridgewood High School (New Jersey) in 1966 he knew that he wanted to study mineralogy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Hazen received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees simultaneously in 1971 in a five-year combined program in Earth science at MIT and his PhD degree in 1975 in mineralogy and crystallography from Harvard University. After graduation, he was a NATO postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Mineralogy and Petrology, University of Cambridge, England (1975–1976), and then joined the Earth and Planets Laboratory (formerly the Geophysical Laboratory) at the Carnegie Institution for Science, first as a postdoctoral research associate from 1976 to 1978, then as a senior staff scientist. Carnegie has served as his base of operations since 1978. Hazen has also held several positions concurrently, most notably executive director and founding principal investigator of the Deep Carbon Observatory (2008–2019) and EDWARD S. GREW School of Earth and Climate Sciences 5790 Bryand Global Science Center University of Maine Orono, Maine 04469 esgrew@maine.edu