Robert Gordon ‘52 JE. After completing my dissertation in what is now known as condensed matter physics and some work for the Air Force R&D Command I began teaching at Columbia University. Then in 1965 I joined Geology & Geophysics at Yale. It was an exciting time. Plate tectonics was the new thing and we were figuring out how solid rock could flow so that continents could drift. The Yale geology department was strong on interdisciplinary collaboration. I worked with colleagues in Economics and, later, the industrial ecologists in Forestry & Environmental Studies on the science and economics of mineral resources. Next came new laboratory techniques for extracting information from archaeological artifacts. With colleagues in Archaeology studies I applied these to interpretation of materials retrieved by the Yale expeditions to Nubia, and to Machu Picchu. I’m now in York, Maine, and in the past year published a book chapter on transformative innovation in mining and metallurgy, and a paper on the tide power system that once occupied what is now Boston’s Back Bay.
