FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Elise]

Hi -

I posted this under Minerals and Mineralogy since it is a scientific symposium and not a mineral show. I know that many are on their way to Munich, but are there any FMFers who are planning on attending the upcoming Geological Society of America's historic 125th Annual meeting in Denver coming up next week? Perhaps if there are members who are presenting at the GSA or know of interesting presentations, they might post a note here and some discussion might arise. The website with links to all the presentations by author, session or day may be found here: https://community.geosociety.org/2013AnnualMeeting/Home

There were a record number of abstracts submitted (over 4,000 I think) and I understand that over 8,000 people from the geo-sciences are expected to attend. I was very excited to be invited by the GIA to present and to have my abstract accepted (GSA Paper No. 375-3) “Scholarly Treasure: the Role of Gems in a University Setting” - making a case for gems as teaching models for mineralogy - especially optical mineralogy - as well as being pertinent to other fields of study. https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2013AM/webprogram/Paper227842.html

The session I am part of which is devoted to the science of gemology is being sponsored by the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), This will be the first time our science will have a niche of its own at this meeting and there is an awesome line-up of presentations in our session, GSA Session T216: "Gemological Research in the 21st Century: Characterizing Diamonds and other Gem Minerals".

Tuesday is to be found here: https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2013AM/webprogram/Session32766.html
and Wednesday here: https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2013AM/webprogram/Session34276.html
(links normalized by FMF)

I like to say that gemology has taken me in through the backdoor of mineralogy; it has also taken me to no less than 3 synchrotrons for related research, Argonne APS, Brookhaven and CHESS - for fun, I attached picture of my co-author Dr. William A. Bassett and me riding the tricycles around the ring at APS. Jordi - I'm not advocating cutting up any nice mineral specimens, it is only that gems can be windows into geological processes and understanding minerals !

Hope to see you there (or if not, here on this thread).
Cheers,
Elise

[Elise]

The Conference over all, and from our perspective, the Gemology Session in particular, was a huge success. I was so happy to run into a few FMF members during the week! I wrote a brief review which has been posted on the Pala site as a webpage:
https://www.palagems.com/gemology.htm
(link normalized by FMF)

Best wishes,
Elise

[Duncan Miller]

Thank you Elise for the link and your very informative (as always) review of the GSA Gemology Session.