Eugen Friedrich Stumpfl, 1931-2004

摘要

Eugen died on 12 July 2004 and we have lost a great friend and leader. Eugen was born in 1931, the son of Professor Friedrich Stumpfl and his Russian wife Dr Ludmilla Stumpfl. In 1940 they moved from Munich to Igls, near Innsbruck in the Austrian Tyrol, a place that he was to love deeply all his life. Eugen studied Geology, Mineralogy and Chemistry at Innsbruck and Heidelberg and he completed his PhD at Heidelberg under the distinguished ore mineralogist, Paul Ramdohr. Eugen Stumpfl came to England in 1958 to take up a post as Lecturer in Economic Geology and Ore Microscopy at University College London. There his interest in ore mineralogy, especially the platinum minerals and their genesis, led to him taking some samples to the BRGM in Paris to use their Cameca microprobe. With that instrument (Mineralogical Magazine, 1961, 32, 833-847) he was the first to list a range of nine platinum and palladium antimonides, bismuthides, arsenides and alloys from the Dreikop Mine, South Africa including Geversite (PdSb_2). That paper made a significant impact and he was able to acquire an early Cameca micro-probe for UCL with the enthusiastic support of the then Head of Department, Sydney Hollingworth. This was the first of Castaing's commercially produced instruments purchased by a Geology Department in Britain, preceded only by Jim Long's prototype instrument at Cambridge. Eugen was very aware of the new applications that the microprobe would have in mineralogical research and with it he broke new ground in the fields of ore mineralogy and ore genesis. With Andrew Clark in 1965 he identified Hollingworthite (Rh,Pt,Pd)AsS from the Dreikop Mine which he named in recognition of Hollingworth's support. It was appropriate that Stumpfiite Pt(Sb,Bi)> one of the phases he observed in 1961, should be named after him (Bulletin de la Societe francaise de Mineralogie et Cristallographie, 1972, 95, 610-613). Later, the surname having been used, the mineral Ag_(11)Hg_2 (a cubic alloy with a large 10 A unit cell) was named Eugenite by the Polish mineralogist Henryk Kucha ('A special mineral for a special friend.'). It is a rare honour indeed for two minerals to be named after the same person. Chris Halls, as Eugen's first PhD student, made good use of the microprobe to examine nickel-cobalt ores.