Like a rock

PHOTO: Owen Egan

Robert Martin has an untidy office. No news there -- professors are famous for filling every inch of their desk space with papers, reports and academic tomes. But Martin's mess is distinctive. His office is overrun with rocks in an assortment of sizes, shapes and colours. "I have a hard time getting rid of things," Martin admits.

A mineralogist with an international reputation and a professor in McGill's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Martin has received word that his moniker will christen a recently discovered mineral.

Mineralogists are a modest bunch -- you'll never catch them naming one of their finds after themselves. Still, new minerals do need names and there is a process for going about it. Someone associated with the discovery proposes a name, often to honour an esteemed colleague, and the name has to pass muster with the International Mineralogical Association's Commission of New Minerals and Mineral Names.

The mineral in question, to be known as martinite, has a pale lilac hue, and was uncovered a few years ago by a trio of amateur mineralogists (including Peter Tarassoff, BEng'56, former vice-president of Noranda) poking around in a quarry at Mont St-Hilaire near Montreal. Suspecting they had uncovered something significant, the new mineral's discoverers forwarded the chunk to Laurentian University geologist Andrew McDonald, who analyzed it and concluded that this was indeed something not seen before. McDonald sent his report to the IMA, and suggested that the mineral be named after Martin. Since the mineral was found in Mont St-Hilaire, where McGill operates a large research field station and where Martin has done much of his work, McDonald thought the honour was apt.

"Mont St-Hilaire is an internationally renowned mineral site, with more than 340 different minerals having been found there. It is arguably the most mineralogically prolific area in the world," relates McDonald. Martin, says McDonald, has done much to outline the geochemical and petrological processes that led to the formation of the region's unique minerals.

McDonald also notes that Martin has been editor of The Canadian Mineralogist since 1983. "It is through his untiring efforts that this journal has become one of the major international journals dedicated to the mineral sciences."

Martin joins a select group of McGill luminaries who have been saluted in similar fashion, including Frank Dawson Adams (adamsite), Thomas Henry Clark (thomasclarkite),

Sir John William Dawson (dawsonite), Gabrielle Donnay (gaidonnayite and donnayite), John Johnston O'Neill (oneillite) and Sir Ernest Rutherford (rutherfordine). The University itself supplied the name for mcgillite.

"I'm absolutely thrilled," says Martin of the tribute, which will become official once McDonald publishes a paper characterizing martinite. "It's an honour and it's forever."

Our spidey senses are tingling

Photos © 2002 Columbia Pictures