Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
as magnetite and minerals, I work on meteorites. The Japanese word for 'meteorite' is 'inseki'. Time
to stop.”
Now Joe lives in Pasadena, but Atsuko and the two boys live across the Pacific, in Japan. Joe goes
there for three months every year. Atsuko was very unhappy in California, and Joe told me rather sadly
that this was the only arrangement that seemed to work: “I've discovered that if you spend a hundred
per cent of your time with someone, and they're only twenty-five per cent happy, then life is miser-
able. But if you spend twenty-five per cent of your time with them and they're a hundred per cent
happy, life is much better.”
Perhaps that's why Joe is so close to his students. He treats them as family. He gives them respons-
ibility, but tempers this with endless support. They know he would go the limit for them, and they
love him for it. They say he's “generous”, “modest” and “brilliant”. Everyone has a “Joe story” to tell.
Here's a sample. Joe, they say, speaks two languages—“English” and “foreign”. He travels the world
doing fieldwork, and after every new field site, his “foreign” becomes more confused. Once, at a petrol
station in Baja California, Joe wanted to thank the elderly Mexican man who had pumped his petrol
and cleaned his windscreen. Joe had just returned from collecting samples in Russia and, confused for
a moment about which branch of “foreign” he should be speaking, said,
“Spasibo”
, which is Russian
for “thank you”. The Mexican petrol attendant beamed with delight.
“Pozhalsta,”
he said. “You're
welcome.” This particular Mexican turned out to be a Russian immigrant. It could only happen to Joe.
All of Joe's research ideas involve magnets of some kind, and there's usually some kind of con-
troversy involved. But those are the only connecting points. Wherever the magnets are, in biology,
geology, chemistry, or astronomy, you'll find Joe. He's suggested a way that animals might use mag-
netic fields to sense imminent earthquakes. He's even worked on evidence for alien life in a meteorite
from Mars. (This last work was done in an ultra-clean lab to avoid any earthly contamination. The sign
outside says: “This is the Door to the Planet MARS. Only the purest in Heart, Mind and Body may
enter here.”)
Still, Joe doesn't seek out controversies for their own sake, and he's no contrarian. He just enjoys
delving into areas where his unusual way of thinking can resolve disputes and mysteries. He's like
a curious and energetic child, blown by the wind into following now this idea, now that, whatever
catches his attention. There's a downside to this. Joe claims he does things for fun, not for recognition,
and that's just as well. Not many fellowship and prize committees appreciate researchers who work
in so many different fields and in such wildly imaginative ways. Joe's students whisper about this an-
grily, sure that he has been passed over for honours that they feel he deserves. But his critics would
say that he spreads himself too thin; he deals in too many different areas, they say, and doesn't follow
them through.
When the idea of a global freeze caught Joe Kirschvink's attention in the 1980s, he betrayed both
his greatest strength and his greatest weakness. He made what's probably the biggest, most imagin-
ative leap of anyone involved with the theory. Without his insights, the Snowball idea would almost
certainly have foundered. But then came the weakness: he didn't follow through. He came up with the
ideas, put together the picture, and then moved on to where the wind next blew him.
J
OE'S PERSONAL
Snowball saga started one day in 1986 when he received a manuscript from a prom-
inent geological journal. The paper was on a topic right in Joe's area of magnetic expertise, and the
journal wanted to know whether they should publish it. Not surprisingly, since the world of magnet
fanatics is a small one, he knew the researchers who had written it. George Williams, then from the
