science · 12 January 2004 · 20 years ago
death
Died 12 Jan 2004 at age 77 (born 26 Jan 1926).
American geologist whose studies on the origins of volcanic rocks contributed to the understanding of the formation of the Earth. In Yellowstone National Park, he discovered that the volcanic eruptions that formed Yellowstone Plateau produced rocks of an unusual type, called welded tuff. In the 1960s, he helped develop the Boyd-English device, a piston-cylinder laboratory apparatus to simulate the pressure exerted on minerals deep within the Earth. Able to create a synthetic diamond, it also helps scientists determine the nature of minerals in the various rock layers of the Earth. He was a leading authority on the mantle root of the 3.5-billion-year-old Kaapvaal craton (the kernel on which a continent grows) rock in southern Africa.
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