Norman Levi Bowen

Norman Levi Bowen was a Canadian petrologist and experimental geologist born June 21, 1887, in Kingston, Ontario, who died September 11, 1956, and who revolutionized experimental petrology and the understanding of mineral crystallization through what became known as Bowen reaction series, a scheme depicting how different minerals crystallize from magma under varying pressure and temperature that remains a standard part of introductory geology study; he set out this and related work in his 1928 book The Evolution of the Igneous Rocks, establishing a geochemical and geophysical foundation for the study of rocks and minerals. He earned a bachelor of science from Queen own University School of Mining in Kingston and a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1912 under advisor Reginald A. Daly, then conducted experimental research at the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington from 1912 to 1937. He won the Bigsby Medal in 1931, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1935 and as a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1949, served as president of the Geological Society of America in 1945, and won the Roebling Medal and the Wollaston Medal both in 1950, in addition to receiving the Penrose Medal in 1941.