Prof. Jeffrey E. Post, distinguished mineralogist, Chairman of Smithsonian Institute of the United States and the Department of Mineral Sciences at the National Museum of Natural History, and Curator of National Gem and Mineral Collection, paid a visit to HZAU for academic exchanges from December 2 to 10 at the invitation of Prof. Feng Xionghan of College of Resources and Environment of HZAU.
Being an expert in structure and characteristics of minerals, Prof. Post visited the laboratories, Museum of HZAU and the History museum of HZAU. Afterwards, at the seminar hosted by Prof. Feng, he gave three academic lectures to teachers and students of College of Resources and Environment: “The Smithsonian Gem and Mineral Collection/Introduction to the Fascinating World of Manganese Oxide Minerals”, “Phyllomanganates: Structures and Behaviors” and “Synchrotron and Rietveld Iinvestigations of Manganese Oxides and Clay Minerals”. During the seminar, attendees including teachers and graduate students from both inside and outside the school exchanged their views.
During his report, Prof. Post introduced special collections of the National Gem and Mineral Collection, focusing on the structure and morphology of manganese oxide minerals in nature, structural differences between manganese oxide minerals in the environment and manganese oxide synthesized in labs, the structure and morphology of biological manganese oxide in the environment, and structural characteristics of layer-structured manganese oxide such as birnessite and tunnel-structured manganese oxide such as todorokite, reflected by characterization techniques such as XRD, XPS, FTIR, XAFS, Raman. After the report, Prof. Tan Wenfeng introduced basic information and main research orientation of the College of Resources and Environment to Prof. Post. Prof. Qiu Guohong and other teachers presented their research findings on soil and environment mineralogy. Both sides had further discussions on mineralogy research.
In addition, Prof. Post listened to the work report on scientific research made by graduate students. Teachers together with students exchanged new methods and theories for studying mineral structure and shared skills on using structure analysis software such as GSAS. In the end, Prof. Post highly affirmed the achievements of the College of Resources and Environment in mineralogy. He put forward some suggestions and expressed his wishes for further cooperation in the future.
【Profile】Jeffrey E. Post, distinguished mineralogist and geologist, Chairman of Smithsonian Institute of the United States and the Department of Mineral Sciences at the National Museum of Natural History, and Curator of National Gem and Mineral Collection. He received his Ph.D. from Arizona State University and was once the deputy editor of American Mineralogist, an authoritative mineralogy magazine. He is a member of the American Mineral Society and has received Jackson Award from the American Clay Minerals Association, the Carnegie Mineralogy Award, and the American Jeweler Lifetime Achievement Award. By using many spectroscopy techniques such as XAFS and XRD as well as structure and characteristics of important minerals in the computer modeling studying environment, he has published more than 100 academic papers on authoritative journals such as Science, PNAS, American Mineralogist, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, Chemical Geology, etc. and owns 3 monographs.
