Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
TWO
THE
SHELTERING
DESERT
In the autumn of 1994, Paul Hoffman was back in Boston, nearly thirty years after he'd won his mara-
thon trophy there. Though he'd continued to run marathons in his spare time, Paul had spent most of the
intervening years sticking to his geological guns. He had acquired that most essential of accoutrements
for the male geologist, a beard. His hair was more unruly these days. Thick and white like a goat's, it
sprang up in surprise from a high forehead that was lined from too many days spent outdoors. Now
fifty-three years old, he wore a pair of round wire glasses and was widely considered one of the top
geologists of his generation. He had been elected a member of the prestigious National Academy of
Sciences, had won countless awards, and written classic academic papers. He was back in Boston not
as a callow nobody running the marathon, but as a full professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at
Harvard University.
Paul had made it, then, into the ranks of world-class science. But still he wasn't satisfied. A cloud
hung over him that he was desperate to shake off. After thirty years of fieldwork in the high Canadian
Arctic, Paul had been abruptly forced out. He had picked a fight with the head of his home institution,
the Geological Survey of Canada, and paid a high scientific price. A high emotional price, too. He had
felt more at home working in the far north than anywhere else in his life, and now he was banned from
returning there. When the blow first struck, he felt humiliated and lost. Now, two years later, he was
arriving at Harvard with as much to prove as ever.
About this time, Paul's alma mater, McMaster University, contacted him as part of a survey of dis-
tinguished alumni. They asked what he'd like to be remembered for, and Paul replied without hesitation.
“Something I haven't done yet,” he said.
P
AUL HAS
been fascinated by minerals since he was nine years old. Next door to his elementary school
in Toronto was the Royal Ontario Museum, and as a child he used to haunt the place. On Saturday
mornings the museum held field naturalist classes, and Paul signed up with enthusiasm. The first year,
the class studied butterflies. The second, fossils. But in the third year, Paul found himself studying min-
erals. They were perfect. It suited the atavistic urges of a young boy to acquire sparkling, shiny crystals
of hornblende, quartz and fluorite, to hoard them and examine them, to try to obtain one of
everything
.
There were plenty of samples to be discovered in the rocks around Toronto, and always the chance
of a new crystal, a rare crystal, a bigger, better sample than one Paul already had. And then the bargain-
ing would begin. What did you find? What do you have that I haven't got? What have I got that you're
dying for? Perhaps I'll trade you.
