Robert Minard Garrels

Robert Minard Garrels was an American geochemist born August 24, 1916, who died March 8, 1988, and who held positions at the University of Michigan, Northwestern University, Harvard University from 1955 to 1965, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and the University of South Florida at St. Petersburg from 1979 onward. He applied physical chemistry methods to geological problems, co-authored the 1965 book Solutions, Minerals, and Equilibria with Charles L. Christ, which revolutionized aqueous geochemistry, published an influential 1952 paper on pH and oxidation reduction potentials in sedimentary rocks, conducted influential research on silicate and carbonate buffering of seawater, and worked on the BLAG model of atmospheric carbon dioxide over 100 million years. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1961, received the Arthur L. Day Medal in 1966, the V. M. Goldschmidt Award in 1973, the Penrose Medal in 1978, and both the Wollaston Medal and the Roebling Medal in 1981.