Memorial to Alfred T. Anderson

Abstract

Alfred Anderson, professor of geology at the University of Chicago from 1968, passed away on January 15, 2020. I met Fred in October 1982 when I first arrived as a postdocworkingwith Fred Ziegler. I beganmy postdoc before I had completed thefinal version of my dissertation. One of the components that I needed to complete was the photographing of thin sections. FredAndersonvery generously gave me access to his microscope—as he recalled in his acceptance speech of the Bowen Award in 2001— thiswas his startup package of $6.5Kwhenhe joined the faculty in 1968. It is a lovely microscope with an attached camera, and he also provided the film that I used to complete my dissertation. This simple, generous act completely typified Fred. He was a quiet, generous, self-effacing person who contributed broadly across volcanology and petrology to graduate, undergraduate, and continuing education students, to the Department of the Geophysical Sciences, and to the college. Fred was initially coeditor with BobNewton, but he later served as editor in chief of the Journal of Geology from 1984 to 2008. This is no small task, and Fred worked tirelessly and guided the journal with a steady hand for those 24 years. Fred mentored many students and postdocs, including in no particular order Guil Gualda, Dork Sahagian, Christine Skirius, Fanqiong Lu, Brett Peppard, Joe Dufek, Paul Wallace, and Stan Williams, among many others. They have gone on to successful careers, which I am sure are due in no small measure to Fred’s generous mentoring and continued support. Fredwas a gentle giantwhose acute observations, whether of hourglass bubbles in volcanic glasses or of volatile budgets in magmas, led to deep insights into volcanic eruptions and emplacement of granites. Fred received the Norman L. Bowen Award, the top award in volcanology in theworld, from the American Geophysical Union in 2001. Everyone should read the citation and Fred’s acceptance comments because they beautifully convey the