Mineralogical Society Awards Honorary Fellowship to Edward Grew
The Mineralogical Society of the United Kingdom (UK) and Ireland has awarded Honorary Fellowship to Edward Grew, a University of Maine research professor. Following Grew’s election, the Society currently has 13 Honorary Fellows, of which 6 are resident in the U.S. (Honorary Fellows must be resident outside the British Isles at the time of election.) Grew is the first Mineralogical Society Honorary Fellow to be elected from the U.S. since the late Stanford professor Rodney Ewing (1946-2024) was elected in 2013.
In 2015 Grew was awarded the Mineralogical Society’s prestigious Collins Medal for “scientific excellence in mineralogy.” Grew has served as an Associate Editor of the Society’s prominent professional journal Mineralogical Magazine since 2006.
Mineralogical Society President Sally Gibson, Professor of Petrology & Geochemistry at the University of Cambridge in the UK, made the Honorary Fellowship presentation on 21 August 2024 at a dinner in the Hotel Conrad in Dublin, Ireland, during the 4th European Mineralogical Conference held August 19-23 at Trinity College, Dublin. The Conference included a special two-day session in Grew’s honor: “The Testimony of the Minerals: A Celebration of Edward S. Grew at 80.” The session co-conveners were Robert Hazen (Carnegie Science, Washington, D.C.), Barbara Dutrow (Louisiana State University), Gerhard Franz (Technische Universität Berlin) and Jesse Walters (University of Graz, Austria). Walters received his PhD from the U Maine School of Earth and Climate Sciences in 2020 when he was honored as the Edith M. Patch Outstanding Ph.D. Student in the College of Natural Sciences, Forestry, and Agriculture. Grew was a member of the faculty committee for Walters’ doctoral thesis. Walters received a Fulbright Fellowship and a post-doctoral research fellowship at the Goethe Universität in Germany.
Due to health issues, Grew was unable to travel to Ireland to receive his award. His wife Priscilla Grew presented his talk in the technical session in his honor, and she read his response to Prof. Gibson’s citation at the award ceremony. Fortunately, the Conference was hybrid, so Grew was able to watch his session and the award presentation via Zoom. Priscilla is Professor Emerita in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
In his acceptance remarks, Grew recalled that two former Mineralogical Society Honorary Fellows played a crucial role in his professional development. Professor James B. Thompson, Jr. was Grew’s PhD thesis advisor at Harvard University. Grew was the Teaching Assistant in 1970 for “JBT’s” famous course on Phase Equilibria. Grew recalled that “Professor Thompson’s application of thermodynamics in petrology was as inspiring as it was challenging – it has shaped my approach to metamorphic petrology for my entire career.” Honorary Fellow Professor Werner Schreyer was Grew’s mentor during his Humboldt Fellowship at the Universität Bochum 1983-1985. Schreyer emphasized how mineral assemblages in a rock with a simple bulk composition can provide valuable petrological insight, especially if this bulk composition can be modelled experimentally. Grew has participated in the discovery and confirmation of 29 new minerals approved by the Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification (CNMNC) of the International Mineralogical Association. Attending the Dublin conference and participating in Grew’s birthday session were Irina Galuskina and Evgeny Galuskin from the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland. The Galuskins discovered and named Edward and Priscilla Grew’s “his and her” new minerals that were approved by CNMNC. The new minerals edgrewite Ca9(SiO4)4F2 – hydroxyledgrewite Ca9(SiO4)4(OH)2, approved in 2011, are a series of calcium humite-group minerals discovered in altered xenoliths in the ignimbrite of Upper Chegem caldera, Northern Caucasus, Kabardino-Balkaria, Russia. Priscillagrewite-(Y), (Ca2Y)Zr2Al3O12 approved in 2020, is a new garnet of the bitikleite group discovered in the Daba-Siwaqa area in the Hatrurim Complex, Jordan.
Keynote talk by Robert Hazen honoring Edward Grew at Trinity College, Dublin on 19 August 2024. Photos courtesy Priscilla Grew.
Edward Grew’s wife Priscilla Grew accepts his award from Mineralogical Society President Sally Gibson (University of Cambridge) on 21 August. Photo courtesy Priscilla Grew