Awards & Scholarships

Joseph Lincoln Gillson, born in Evanston, Illinois, received his B.S. and M.S. at Northwestern University, and an Sc.D. in Geology from M.I.T. While teaching at the latter, he became interested in and taught a course on industrial minerals, making a specific study of the talc deposits in Vermont. One result of his specialization in non-metallic minerals was his appointment to the staff of E. I. duPont de Nemours and Co. in the Development Department. Eventually he was made Chief Geologist of that Company. During his thirty years' association with duPont, he investigated many mineral raw materials, especially deposits of ilmenite and fluorspar, and soon became an authority in the field of industrial minerals.

Dr. Gillson is the author of many outstanding papers. In Industrial Minerals and Rocks, First Edition, he wrote the chapter on talc. In the Second Edition, the chapter on titanium. He was Editor-in-Chief of the Third Edition. For several years, he wrote the annual review on Industrial Minerals in the Mining Congress Journal and is the author of several articles on titanium minerals, appearing in Mining Engineering. In 1957, he received the D. C. Jackling Award from AIME for his work in Economic Geology.

His dynamic activity on behalf of AIME has been notable. He was Chairman of its Industrial Minerals Division in 1947, served two terms as Vice-President, a term as President-elect, another as President, at the end of which term, in 1960, he announced AIME had oversubscribed its quota for the new United Engineer Center, for which project he had worked unstintingly. Since his retirement from dnPont, Dr. Gillson has been a Visiting Lecturer in Economic Geology at M.I.T.