Who's Who in Mineral Names: Donald R. Peacor

摘要

Donald Peacor was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1936. As a child, he had a strong interest in mineral collecting. He would take trains to Maine, Connecticut, and New York to collect many yet-to-be-described new minerals. During his high school years, he worked at the Harvard Mineralogical Museum, while continuing to collect minerals from dozens of localities. In 1958, after finishing high school in only three years, Peacor went to Tufts University. During his college days, he further developed his keen interest in mineralogy. He was able to finish his bachelor of science degree in two years and decided to pursue his master's and doctorate degrees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the supervision of Martin J. Buerger. With the guidance of one of the greatest crystallographers and mineralogists in the world, and with bright fellow graduate students around him (including Charles Prewitt, Charles Burnham, Wayne Dollase, and Tibor Zoltai), Peacor quickly mastered the essential skills in crystallography and mineralogy. He solved the structures of the pyroxenoids bustamite and rhodonite by single-crystal X-ray methods. Peacor finished his doctorate in 1962 and later that year joined the faculty at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, first as a lecturer in the Department of Mineralogy, and then as an assistant professor in the Department of Geological Sciences. While at the University of Michigan, he built a world-renowned program in X-ray and electron beam analysis of solid materials. In the meantime, he supervised numerous graduate students and hosted many visitors from around the world.