I'm pam Stevenson and we're doing an oral history interview for the
Arizona State University retirees Association Living History video project
and today is october the 22nd of 2000 and three we're at the visitor
information center of issue at rural road and Apache and I'll let you
introduce yourself. Why don't you tell us your name and what your role was
that the issue when you're retired? Well, my name is Carlton More and I
came here as the director of the Center for Meteorite Studies and I
retired as director of the Center for Meteorite Studies. So I may have the
long longest term as an administrator in the same job in the university
history. Some of the people we talked to came here as students. So that's
why we kind of asked that. Um why don't you just go back a little bit and
tell us about when you were, when you were born and where you were born. I
grew up in hempstead. New york, hempstead is a suburb of new york city. My
father was a teacher uh, of english and they decided pretty early. I
better off being a scientist, not an english student or a language student
as my mother taught and I went through kindergarten through high school in
hempstead, which then was a very nice place to live. Ah I went to college
at Alfred University in new york in the college of ceramics. I've just
been Digging through some of my old things and found out that when I went
there in 1950, the tuition was zero and that's why, I I went there and won
a region scholarship. which is a competitive exam in new york. And so that
paid my room and board. So of course my parents nothing to send me to
school. If you're going to be a scientist, why would you go to college?
Well, it's, it's a ceramic science and ceramic engineering. To tell you
the truth, I didn't know what it was when I went there. All I knew the
price was right and the principal of the high school had gone there and
some other people I knew in new york state at the time, they didn't have a
state university system. So you either went to a teacher's college or two.
one of the contract colleges which were agriculture at Cornell, where
George Bateman from A S you went and or ceramics at Alfred or forestry at
Syracuse, that's the only choice you had. That's the term I hadn't heard
was ceramics. Um I know you neglected to tell us when you were born there.
Was that intentional? Oh no, no, I was born September 1, 1932 I was born
in new york new york, but that,
but I never lived there. So that's a, no, I mean, except for a few days,
so that's insignificant. So when you went to college, what were you
planning to do when you graduated? Well, I was a scholarly student and I
really wasn't planning, I just went to college. And when I was there I met
very nice professors in
in the chemistry section in the ceramic college and one of them talked me
into going to applying to caltech in Pasadena for graduate school. So I
did that and got accepted and went there. And that's a wonderful school.
Um That was a big move for you, wasn't it, from new york to California.
Well, many people seem to don't want to move that far and it was fine with
me. I crossed the the country this summer before I went. I'd worked at
Brookhaven National Laboratory, has a summer student. And and on a problem
problem related to cosmic rays and I collected samples across the country
going to caltech. Um I guess I should mention in grade school we had the
same teacher in a subject matter Through 6th, 7th and 8th grade. And my
6th, 7th and 8th grade teacher, mrs Hoyer was very interested in geology,
so I got interested in geology. So you say, what did I plan to do? I was
interested in geology and yet I went to a school that didn't have a
geology department. So what was your Bachelor's degree actually? Glass
technology, Glass science. When you went to caltech then hopefully then
when I went to caltech I went in chemistry
caltech, many people don't know is a very, very small school and they
allow you to move from department to department quite easily in the
chemistry department required you to have a minor and because of that
interest in rocks and minerals from grade school, I minored in geology,
some students minor in physics, some in math, some in biology depending
upon their interest. And it was in the geology department that they had a
professor named Harrison Brown who had come there from Chicago, who was
very interested in meteorites. And that's how I got interested in in
meteorites. So when did you first get interested in that? When I went to
graduate school? Except except in grade school and college, I was
interested in rocks and meteorites are rocks. So I guess you mentioned
that when you traveled across the country collected samples that well,
what we were doing was that cosmic rays bombard everything on the earth.
And if you have a rock which is exposed
to the air, it begins to get radioactive a little bit. And they were
trying to develop a technique which has now worked out very well to age
date when that exposure took place. So, for example, jumping a little bit
ahead. The age of meteor crater up by Winslow is 50,000 years. And that
date is determined by how long the rocks there have been exposed to the
cosmic rays. In other words, when they're buried, they have no radio
activity in them. Then all of a sudden there from the meteorite impact
shut out onto the surface and then they begin to collect the radio
activity. So it's a geologic clock that we can use? So you mentioned on
this trip I was collecting rocks because they were attempting to get rocks
that would maybe test their idea. And and among the rocks I collected,
we're like the wave cut terraces and like bonneville and Utah where the
during glacial times, the lake bonneville was much larger than the great
salt lake it is today. And was cutting benches into the rocks. So they
said that's a period in time that they might be able to date. And so I
collected all kinds of rocks. And then when actually I got to las Vegas, I
tested them to see if they were chlorine in them because that's what we
wanted to find and the ones that didn't have chlorine in, I left behind
and the others I sent back to Brookhaven and of course I always thought
some motel maid must have thought I was a complete nut leaving this pile
of rocks outside the door. And you said, we who are you doing this?
Actually, I was doing this with the scientists at Brookhaven named Oliver
Schaefer and Ray Davis. The coincidences that related to this work. Ray
Davis won the Nobel Prize in physics this year.
I'm gonna ask you if you would keep your eye contact with her with her
because it's going to make sure sure. Okay, well that's true anyway.
Yeah, that's alright. That's alright, yeah.
Was that your first trip across the country? Have you ever been West? The
only time I had been the farthest west I'd ever been before. That was
Cincinnati because I went to a meeting of the american ceramic society in
Cincinnati and of course I crossed the country before freeways so I went
through all sorts of small places and towns on the way. What did you think
of that trip? How long did it take your tells?
Well, I'm pretty, I went from hempstead where I lived to Alfred which is
in western new york from Alfred too western Ohio. And then I
went from there to eastern Nebraska and met a young boy in a gas station
who thought this was pretty neat and he wanted to go to California with me
and I went from there to Denver stayed two days in Denver then went up
through Rocky Mountain National Park and from there to Salt Lake City
because we planned for me to collect rocks around Salt Lake City, stayed
there two days went down to las Vegas where I am tested the rocks and then
onto Pasadena. The thing that surprised me the most when I got to
California I thought I saw these orange orchards and I thought they'd be
selling cheap orange juice and I never did pass an orange juice and and I
remember of course parking in at caltech and walking up onto the campus,
going to Chemistry, Finding a place to live and starting graduate school.
So how long were you at caltech? four years at Caltech, it's a wonderful
school Linus Pauling was the department chairman, he Nobel prize winner
twice. The man who taught freshman biology was it was a Nobel laureate and
the men that taught freshman physics had won the Nobel prize. So um you
can't get away with much there that professors know what they're doing
pam. The only thing I think we should put here is what year that was that
you crossed it? Yeah,
Well that was 1955 when I went to caltech.
A lot different as you mentioned. There were no anyways um so the years
you were at caltech, what did you end up with your master's? Your
doctorate just went straight through for a doctrine. I did a two part
thesis, one in chemistry on the kinetics of kinetics problem. And then in
the geochemistry minor I worked on the analysis of meteorites. Now the
interesting thing is recently in digging through my papers, not my papers
but papers, the school at that at that time I was in graduate school a
shoe began to get interested in meteorites. The Sputnik had happened at
that time and there was a man here named George Boyd and a man who I never
met because he died before I arrived named Crowley who was chairman of
Chemistry. And up in Northern Arizona was a person named dining er who had
made a large meteorite collection and he was thinking of retiring and
George Boyd got the idea that maybe a issue that was trying to become a
real university at the time might enter the space it raised by getting
this meteorite collection. And the note that I found was that okay lets me
put it this way. It was rather strange that the meteorite collection was
in the chemistry department because that's where the interest was. And
they found out that there was a graduate student at caltech in Pasadena
interested in meteorites and they thought they might get him. I didn't
know this at the time and that was me. However, when I left caltech I went
east and I taught two years at Wesleyan university in Connecticut.
And then I had a phone call from new york and a man named Herbert fails
who was the vice president of international nickel company said he wanted
to come see me now, fails was a flyer. And as a flyer he was interested
he'd seen meteor crater in Arizona and he got to know nine in her. So he
was a friend of 19 years nine Inner introduced him to a. S. U. And they
sent him to talk to me about coming here for their indirect, why don't
they just call you up themselves?
I don't know
well tell me about that person. Meeting
with fails. The situation at Wesleyan was this that it's a very nice
school and wealthy students go there and and it had a great history, but
they had, they were going through a phase I would say of thinking they
were Harvard and they weren't giving many faculty members tenure. So all
the assistant professors were nervous. Now I'd only been there two years
But the ones that were there five or 6, we're beginning to get nervous and
that came down and really then when the opportunity to work with
meteorites presented itself, I was willing to consider it. Um I asked to
come here and look the place over which I did and that was rather funny in
itself. But I was met by George Bateman who is a wonderful person and they
showed me around and and that I decided to take the job I should say at
that time. Of course A. S you and other people remember this. It was all
caught up with city streets and we didn't have them all at the power city
, pretty much ended down with the president's or the old presidents houses
on College Avenue. But that was a Pigpen at the time. Uh and they hadn't
built down that far yet. So it was pretty, pretty small place. But I had
the opportunity to work with and and be in charge of which was one of the
larger meteorite collections in the country If my memory serves me right,
I had about 578 meteorites in it. Now what I mean by that is if you have a
meteorite from meteor crater Counts as one. Even if you had 10,000 pieces
, that's only one. So it's five. So we had meteorites from 578 different
localities in the world that nine Ingrid had put together back up a little
bit. You said you came out to see a issue and that that was funny and why
? Why was that funny? And what year was that?
That was 1961?
I don't know. I think it was funny. Uh for example, when they took me to
dinner, they took me to the bowling alley to dinner. It's just a big
change from what people do now in the recruiting.
Then when I said I would come, that was when Ji Homer Durham arrived as a
new president. So they had a in the spring they had a celebration for his
inauguration. And among the things they did was they had a symposium on
meteorites and I arranged to get the speakers and which included Gerald
kuiper from Tucson and and a wonderful man named Al near from
University of Minnesota and others. Now by that time a s you had gotten
the grant to get the meteorite collection from the NSF. And that's another
story in a way because what it was was the Smithsonian wanted this very
badly. But one of the NSF people thought it would be good to not let the
Smithsonian have a monopoly on the meteorites that there should be
subjects and balances. And nine anger was interested in having it in
Arizona. Apparently the uh the other institution in Arizona had insulted
him and he had no interest in it going to Tucson And uh said that it would
it would cost the NSF a lot more money for that to happen now. Remember
this is 1960 or so and even then it cost
Over $300,000 to get this collection from. Which was a lot of money then.
But NSF was willing to put it up. The state of Arizona put in About
$50,000 and Mr Fails who had come to see me, gave a private donation and
he was a faithful friend even after that every year he'd he'd give us
money to support us. When he retired from new york he moved to phoenix.
And he was a graduate of M. I. T. But always said well if I live in
Arizona I should support a issue, which I wish we had more people like
that. He's 19 years. Sounds like quite a character Leininger was quite a
character. He in the 1920s was a biology teacher at McPherson College in
Kansas and a big fireball went over and he chased the fireball and um he
did not find the meteorite from the fireball, which is not unusual. But he
found two other meteorites on farms that had fallen at some undetermined
time in the past. So when we have meteorites on our collection, some are
falls which actually have seen the fall or hit a roof or something like
that. And some are fines that may have fallen a million years ago and just
been sitting there. I mean, as I mentioned, Uh, at meteor crater, it's uh
, 50,000 years ago that meteorite landed and you can find meteorites on
the surface uh, from that fall. So they haven't rusted away. Some do and
some don't. But and he realized there were meteorites out there and he got
interested and he was what I would say a real nut. And I think great
sometimes great advances in science and things are made by nuts. And he uh
started, he quit his job and started chasing meteorites. He wrote very
well. He wrote books that he's old. He would get meteorites and trade them.
He would, he would offer to give talks to clubs and schools for pay. And
then of course the depression came along when you didn't need to make that
much money to scratch and farmers needed a little money. If they found a
meteorite, they'd sell it to him in a reasonable amount. And he built this
collection up to the 500 plus meteorites that I told you about earlier.
And how did he end up in Arizona? Well, he he went from Kansas to the
Natural History Museum in Denver then of course the magnet in Arizona for
meteorites is meteor crater. And so he went down there and set up a museum
on old Route 66 north of the crater. You can still see the ruins there of
this building now. It's very interesting I found recently uh from a
wonderful museum in Winslow. He didn't build that museum. Someone else had
tried it earlier and it didn't work and went Under and right after 29 but
he came along and he had his museum up there when they built the
interstate then they People weren't going by on Route 66 anymore. He moved
to Sedona and had a museum there. And that's actually where I first saw
him when I was at caltech I guess in about 1957 I came over here on a trip
to Arizona to see different things. And we went to the meteorite museum in
Sedona, little knowing that a few years later that would be my uh huh take
over from him to curate the samples and and come to a, what was it that
first interested you about meteorites? I think it's I think it's because
of their rocks. And then as I said, which is the way lots of things
happened. The luck was that that the chemists in the geology department at
caltech were interested in media rights. And I did a thesis half my thesis
was on the chemical analysis of stony meteorites. And did you think when
you did that thesis that meteorites would become your life's work? Not
really. Although when I went back to Wesley and I finished the papers I
had on meteorites and I had an interest. But I think one of my problems is
I have too many interests and and even at A. S. U. Had have been more
efficient when I got here because I was in charge of the meteorite
collection and then that was in chemistry. So as a professor of chemistry
and I volunteered to be a professor of geology department and that's a
little too thin if you know what I mean. Tell me a little bit about when
you first came to A. S. U. Where was your first office? What was the issue
you were telling a little bit about it actually. The department of
Chemistry had gotten the meteorites. They'd set it up and we they had it
all packed in a little closet was in some steel bins and numbered and in
the basement and my office was in the chemistry department up on the
second floor of the c wing of the physical science building later on. Um I
moved down onto the first floor and where it is still today. And I have
made a
storage area and museum and things like that for meteorites. So the
meteorite center expanded significantly. Um
When did it first expand and become. It's sort of open to the public there
And we've got a little display. Well I guess that I can't tell you the
exact date but it obviously was not too long after I arrived there. The
the strength of the meteorite center progressing was really from homer
Durham. He knew that this was important. He knew this was exciting. And
you know it's the same thing when you have the president of the university
really interested, he can put pressure on the Dean and the chairs for
space and things like that. It's kind of analogous to me at least because
I enjoyed very much being a classroom teacher. If you have a few peppy
students in the front row that pulls the professor along too. And the same
thing with Durham's interest in concern
just before
he left. I guess one of the most exciting things happened in my career at
issue which many people remember me for. It was then I then I applied to
do the analysis of the moon rocks when they were brought back and and then
he left at the same time which was very disappointing to me. But
that was very nice. I I guess my main contribution to the university is is
the meteorite collection. We'll talk more about building that up. And but
many, many people remember me for bringing the moon rock samples here. I
always like to say when we have visited that a s you got over 200 lunar
samples before. Okay. Any of the other schools in the state got any? Tell
me, how did that come about? Do you get involved with the project. But
what what you do is you
apply to federal agencies for grants all along. And I had been working on
primarily carbon in meteorites and
and then when they announced the opportunity to do analyses of
analysis of the moon rocks then I just followed that up. So essentially we
practiced on the meteorites and in fact we haven't talked about that yet
at A. S. U. One of the obligations that the NSF put is that we must
provide samples to all the scientists in the country and around the world
to keep this as a research collection. So we were sending out lots of
samples for analysis and most of those analyses at the time where to see
how the solar system was formed and things like that and understand
meteorites but it also was practicing for the moon moon rock samples. So I
had in fact my first paper from ASU research done here not at caltech or
or in Connecticut was analysis of carbon and meteorites. And we developed
a very nice technique that um worked. And my motto is the only good
analytical chemist is a frightened one. You have to keep trying to make
sure you're not making a mistake and then going on. So so when I applied
to Nasa then because I've done the carbon analysis and meteorites, they I
said I would be the one to do it on the moon rocks. Did you apply for that
before they ever went to the moon? That is correct. So you're just you're
confident that we're going to get those moon box I guess. So uh the the uh
I of course remember when they went to the moon and my the place I held my
breath when it was time for them to take off and come back And they did.
And did you have any say in what? Oh no no. I think the moon, the first
two missions 11 and 12 were um political mechanical missions. They landed
near the equator of the moon where it's easier to land. They picked up
rocks randomly. Although they had been trained in the geology of what to
look at. But I think the important thing was to land, pick up something,
get out of there and they brought in and the first um
sample that we got here at A. S. U. Was lunar soil. Or properly called
regular. Where they just took a scoop and scooped up some of the surface
and brought it to back to the lunar receiving land. How did you get that?
Did somebody have to go personally deliver it or I went to Houston to pick
it up. The First analysis I of course remember the date was was in the
evening of October nine ah
1960
one. And um
No I'm sorry 69 October 9, 1969. And
we put the sample in our instrument, which requires that the sample be
burned. And then the carbon turned into carbon dioxide which we detect
with the gas chromatograph. And the wonderful thing is it was a dial like
the dial on a clock. And we pushed the buttons and waited and all of a
sudden that mhm. The clock started moving and we had carbon in the sample
had about 100 and 20 parts per million carbon in the in the moon rock.
Then we got the other types of moon rocks
chips broken off of the larger roxy astronauts brought back and we'd get
about two or 3 g, which are little pieces about a quarter of an inch in
size. But we can do our analysis with those, those samples.
Well, that's kind of an interesting scientific story because in the
beginning I thought that the carbon, the rocks had very low carbon and the
soil was very high in carbon. And I thought the carbon might have arrived
from the carbon rich meteorites which bombarded the moon. And the first
paper in the lunar science conference, that's what we said that the carbon
came from meteorites
later on, I discovered that that isn't so that after I had done the carbon
, I did sulfur and the story was not consistent between them is a very
good scientific method approach to things. And we discovered that what
happens any carbon that comes on the meteorites, the solar wind, that high
energy radiation I talked about from my Brookhaven days wipes
the carbon off of the surface of the moon. But the radiation from the sun
is so strong they called solar wind. It is driving
carbon into the surface of the rocks. So the carbon on the moon came from
the sun. The sulfur on the moon came from a little bit from the sun, but
there's not that much sulfur, there's much more carbon and hydrogen on the
moon. And
and so we developed the model which said most of the carbon on the moon
does come from solar wind particles which are driven out of the surface of
the sun with such a high velocity they slam into the moon rocks and get
captured. Um, okay. The person who was supposed to do the carbon analysis
in what they call the lunar receiving lab in Houston didn't do a good job
and I gotta hurry up call just before Apollo 12. And these missions went
on one right after the other and said, can you come now to Houston and set
up a parallel instrument to do the analysis in Houston. So starting with
Apollo 12, not only was I on the lunar sample analysis team, I was on what
they call the lunar sample preliminary examination team in the quarantine
labs in Houston and I was one of the five or six scientists that got the
moon rocks first and we were in the same place where the astronauts were
kept to make sure there was no diseases or things brought back from the
moon. We had to sign a form which said if there's a break, we're in there
, if it's bad, we may be in there the rest of our life, but it's worth
doing. That's pretty exciting. And so For Apollo 12 and we were all set up
for Apollo 13. And then of course it had the accident and didn't go and
Apollo 14 We did this. And by then they knew that there were no bugs on
the moon so they relaxed it a little bit. We still did the preliminary
examination, but we didn't have to go through the whole
quarantine thing. So I had a lot of nice graduate students at the time and
and they worked on meteorites and they worked on the moon rocks and we
just juggled the teaching and juggled the research all at the same time.
Must have been a busy time for you. Very busy night Probably had about 14
people working for me at that time. Tell me a little bit about how did the
meteorite collection grow from that original donation? The meteorite
collection grows by having people bring in meteorites and things like that.
That is very slow. We call the ones that are just ordinary earth rocks
media wrongs, not media rights. And today If we have 1000 rocks brought in.
We're lucky if we get one media right and we get 999 media wrongs takes a
lot of time. The biggest
the thing that I pulled off with respect to the meteorite collection was
that Amherst college in massachusetts had a A collection of meteorites put
together way back in the 1840s by a man named see you shepherd. And when
people began to get interested in meteorites they would approach um
the collections and say would you give us a sample and amorous college
being a liberal arts college, they couldn't handle this. So I made an
arrangement to buy their collection
and added to the collection which essentially Um added about 400 or so
different meteorites. And I think actually more important pristine
meteorites than the original ones that we had when we did that we became
the third largest collection of meteorites in the world. Only the british
museum which plundered their empire. And the Smithsonian or larger and A.
S. U. Was in third place. Since then they have found meteorites in
Antarctica and the japanese have been very active at doing that. So
they've snuck into fourth place. But I could say even today we are one of
the five most important meteorite collections in the world. And certainly
by far the largest in the university.
And so we have approximately 1600 different meteorite falls represented in
our in our collection which is more than double what we started with and
Meteorite falls. So those are all ones that have fallen. Not no no no some
are fines and some are false but some but some of the fines are very
interesting. Meteorites. I mean the ones from media crater are technically
finds. No one was here 50,000 years ago when it fell. But we have the
specimens. Some of them are old and rusty and some are some survived
amazingly well. And I know you have some that you believe are from mars.
That's correct. We
actually some of them came with the original nine ng or collection and
some with Amherst and some from trading later on at the time we got them.
We didn't know they were from mars And it turns out we have what? six or 7
meteorites for mars
there are also known meteorites from the moon. Most of them came from
Antarctica. We don't have any of them except one that was given to me when
I retired. So I have a moon rock but A. S. U. Doesn't. But if we give
talks and things. I I loved my personal moon rock around all the moon
rocks that Nasa sent us. We have to send back. You don't have any of that.
Don't have any. I don't have any of the ones that were brought back.
Question when the astronauts were up there. Did they find any meteorites
? No when the media right? When a meteorite hits the moon it hits with
such a high velocity, it vaporizes the meteorite. In other words, it just
atomize, is it on the earth? Because they come in so fast? Uh 20,000 miles
an hour and it and it hits on the earth. The atmosphere cushions the
impact. Um What are you proudest about in your career at issue?
Well what am I proudest about obviously is building the finest meteorite
collection in the world. Ah john Fink who's the vice president for
research always now tells the story that A. S. U. Has a big space program.
But it all started with the media rights with me coming and I brought Ron
Greeley and he brought Christiansen. So you know this it worked. What what
Crowley had in mind of this being the beginning it worked. So I suppose at
a retirement ceremony, Crow said, remember when all of us in this room are
long gone, this meteorite collection will be here And we have actually a
piece of a meteorite in the collection that fell in 1492.
So it has been preserved For over 500 years and this, this is still a
tremendous obligation ah freya shoe to have assumed. Now way back going
back in time when when NSF gave us the money, they didn't quite trust the
issue. So they insisted we have an advisory committee and the advisory
committee was made up of a Representative of the National Academy of
Sciences? A representative of the National Science Foundation, a
representative of the state of Arizona, a representative from the
university and a representative from the American Museum of Natural
History and a representative from the Smithsonian. And so for the 1st 10
or so years these people would meet and I'd tell them what we're doing.
And eventually I was very proud that al near who probably doesn't mean
much to people, but in the scientific field, he's a man that invented,
developed mass spectrometers. And he's the man that separated the uranium
for the atom bomb was on the committee. He's a wonderful, wonderful man.
He sent a nice letter. He said, you know when NSF gave a issue this
collection, they were worried that it would be dissipated and not treated
correctly. And what it's turned out to be is that that now it is the
world's leader on how to provide meteorites for research and how to
provide uh protect them and things like that. So eventually the committee
um I didn't mean anything. So I should be proudest of the meteorite
collection. I have a few other funny things I I do like to teach and I and
uh I guess I should have had 40 graduate students and I should be proud or
students get graduate degrees under my direction and I should be proud of
that. Some of them have done very well in the space thing. And then I have
a funny thing that I can't find the piece of paper, Don dots once sent me
a copy of a letter sent to the alumni association and and the when I first
came here, there was a thing called the Academic Year Institute and that
was again post Sputnik. And the government was putting a lot of money into
training public school teachers. And he got a letter from a teacher who
said that he was giving some money to the Alumni Foundation and he wanted
to say he was giving it because of me and he said he had a hard time at a
S. U. And I was the one who pulled him through and got his masters degree
and he had just become the first black professional to get a move up in
the administration in las Vegas. And that of course is what happens as a
teacher when you teach, you don't know what's gonna happen, but later
sometimes uh you get nice things like that back somewhere in my desk, that
letter maybe, but I don't know where it's gone, so I'm proud of that type
of thing. You know, if a teacher can get one student, that's that's a
major thing.
Um a couple of things you mentioned in passing dr Bateman,
there is the building that, well, Dr Bateman was uh I think you've
interviewed. No, maybe not a mean, um he was the first PhD to come from a
S. U. He was in charge of physical science, he was the chairman of the
chemistry department um before Crowley and just was a nice guy and very
supportive. Uh Pretty much I arrived near the end of his career. The
department chairman and chemistry when I came and he came the same year I
did was Leroy hiring and chemistry was kind of the leader in the
university of turning into a real PhD granting department. So Irene I was
working on rare earths and things like that and but Bateman was around and
anything I needed I could get support and help from, from Bateman, Arnold
tilden was the dean of Liberal Arts, who was the first dean. And then as I
said for me, homer Durham was the president who gave tremendous support.
Did you consider yourself more of a a chemistry professor of geology
professor And now they use the term geochemist. Well we taught a course
called geochemistry and I was the first person who taught it. Um I like
geology. I would honestly have to say geology is my hobby to take a minor
in geology at caltech. You get the equivalent
in courses of a PhD and or master's degree. But technically I'm a chemist.
And and I just do geology and I taught many many geology courses actually
when I taught at Wesleyan University before I came here I was in the
geology department. But although I taught chemistry there too, I'm always
volunteering to doing things and that was not the most efficient thing to
do. We need those volunteers things don't get done with that. You were
also the region's professor in the first group of regions professors and,
and I had my friends nominate me for that. Especially a very good friend,
other people that I got along with just fine. And I like very much where
Gilbert Katie, who was a vice president here at the time and jimmy
Chrisman and jimmy Chrisman wrote a letter nomination for the region's
professorship. I was in the 1st 1st group for that ah, which is very nice
of course to be honored. And what does that mean to be a regents professor
? Well, the region's wanted to do things for some professors who have
distinguished themselves and
in research or teaching and teaching and service.
Someone once said I probably am the most balanced and that obviously I've
done good research and I've always loved teaching. And then when we were
doing the moon rock analysis, I probably talked at over 400 schools and
service clubs in Arizona taking my samples with me and things like that.
So I'm sure there are people that deserve to be regions professors who
aren't. But that's, that's the way some of these things things happen
earlier, I had received the
particularly achievement award from the alumni association.
I'd much prefer had the faculty teaching award, But never, never won that
one.
You mentioned you were also involved in the kind of dispute over sparky as
well. I've also been chairman of the faculty uh
Senate and Assembly In 1972 3, I guess. And now they call it the person
the president of the faculty, but back then it was the chair of the
faculty. And so with respect to internal service in the university, I I
did that as well as becoming a region's professor. So, um,
and so I was willing to help the school in any way I can back and I can't
tell you the exact date, but it's actually in the back of one of these,
the Saguaro, your books is the story that there were some students back
when students were feeling their oats a little more wanted to, they
thought sparky was not a good mascot and they wanted to change the mascot.
So they drew a thing that looks like a norse God or something like that
and they wanted to substitute this. And and I honestly believe that uh
harry New Bern, the president was not in favor of this. So eventually they
put together a committee that I was supposed to look at the problem and I
was the chair of the committee. And and I came up with the idea that the
mascot not only belongs to the students who happened to be passing through
at the time, but but to alumni. So I said if we're going to vote on this,
then it should include the alumni association as well as the Associated
Students and of course when that happened overwhelmingly the alumni voted
to keep sparky. So I I'd kind of forgotten that. But Bernie Jackson, who
was in the vice president for student affairs office, reminded me of that
he was on the committee and I didn't remember being so clever, but he he
thought I was pretty clever pulling pulling this thing off. So thanks to
you, we still have still have sparky. I'm Mhm. Mhm. Um Let's see anything
else that is memorable about your career that you wanted to tell us about
today?
Well, there's one thing um that was very nice right now, there's a big
debate on the martian samples that whether there's life on MArs or not.
And what of my graduate students, Everett Gibson, who graduated with a PhD
in 1969, is kind of the spokesperson. One of the leaders in the discovery
of what they think are bacteria in in meteorites that have been knocked
off of MArs and arrived on the Earth. And whether this is so or not, we
don't know, but it's good science because we can go to mars and collect
more rocks and and check this out or drill holes on mars and say, and it's
a great interest whether there's life on MArs now. Well based on the
meteorites we have, we can't prove there was life on mars. But yet a lot
of time and money has been put in to looking at this and they have not
been able to disprove that these things in the meteorite or are not. So he
he and I have gotten along very well. He uh over the years and when I had
my retirement
party, he, he wanted to come and when he came he brought me a wonderful
surprise which is a plaque put together by Nasa. Which has the Arizona
flag that was taken to the moon on Apollo 16 and and brought back. And
it's kind of nice that
that the governor didn't get the flag. I got the flag and then it's signed
by john young who was the astronaut that went to the moon and collected it
And with a citation saying that they had given me the this and thanks
because I had trained the astronauts on what to look on the moon and done
their preliminary examination team and done the moon rock analysis.
And that was a very nice surprise tribute. Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. Well in a vault in Nasa, Nasa has got all kinds of vaults. That's
where they keep their moon rocks and ah astronauts themselves are not
allowed to put things in their pocket and take them home.
And do you continue to be involved with some of the space exploration?
Well, the funny thing is that I have a lot of the interest in the moon has
waned. But there are those of us who still think about the moon. And I
even get emails from people like Harrison Schmidt. Jack Schmidt, Who's the
astronaut who went on Apollo 17 said I have this idea. What do you think
it's kind of anticlimactic? I've been in in Denver at a meeting and
standing in the hall talking with moon rocks and all the students go by
and I don't think one in 1000 would understand that man went to the moon,
picked up the rocks and he's kept this his interest. He was a us senator
from New Mexico for six years and then it's now back looking at the moon.
So I guess when you begin in interested in these things you don't lose
them. And and I've got lots of things I haven't finished. So I've got a
lifetime of publication and thinking about the media rights and and things
like that. Recently I helped media crater in Northern Arizona put up their
new display and so I'm on the television up there to explaining about
meteorites and and that's how we get new meteorites. We interest kids and
they see them fall or find them. And remember that a sus interested in
these types of things. Are you still helping out at the Media center? Yes
, I am
technically I'm retired but I have a buyback to to do that because Lori
lesson who's now the director of the Meteorite center, she's so busy doing
her remarks work that and as you can well imagine for for the rest of my
life, I'm going to get phone calls, what's this and how do we do that? So
I've been over to the center and it looks like everything's kind of filed
on three by five cards. Are you looking to like computerized while they're
doing that now? But you know, we didn't have that much um going on. So we
could live that way uh with these, it's more important to do the science
than it is to be sitting there putting information into computers. I might
, I might mention in the center, we we not only have the meteorites we
have, which I got from caltech microfilm, for example, of every article
that they could find On Meteorites published before 1950.
And, and I think we should transfer that to the university archives and
let professionals take care of this because that's an invaluable resource
to, But it's all on microfilm. And if you came in and said, I want to see
a paper published in 1780 would be a lot of trouble to go through all that
and find the thing, although it's fairly well classified.
So we do lots of things. Um,
and we get a lot of people bringing rocks in still.
You get more media rights. Oh no, no, no, very rarely do we get a
meteorite and I guess we don't tell people exactly was, but they wanted to
be a meteorite. So they try hard to, to make it a meteorite, the analysis
that they're doing now is much more sophisticated than, well what that's
why we have to keep going because because advances in meteorites are made
as they improve instruments and improved the facilities. And so we can
look at things that we couldn't when I first came here. And that's why
it's very important not to use them up because you don't want someone 100
years from now saying why do those people destroy that? That meteorite or
why didn't they preserve it properly or things like that? Um
Back In 1991 we when times were tight there was a committee put together
in liberal arts on how to save money. And and they came up with an idea
that they we could just
closed down the meteorite center And
and that didn't happen of course. But I got a nice letter from a person. I
don't remember whether it was in history or political science. Someone I'd
never met and said to the Dean, are you crazy that it was this was not the
Dean's idea. Uh I just got back from china and the only thing they know in
china about a S. U. Is the meteorite collection. See so it's following
crows idea of having good things. It's one of the by hook or by Crook. I
built up this wonderful collection that's known all over the world. It's
ironic. It seems to be better known around the world than it is right here.
Maybe. You know if you ask students on the malware is the meteorites
they'll say what?
It's not a very impressive center. I must say it's pretty unassuming. You
mean you don't big fancy center?
Well at times they talk about new buildings and new exhibits but but it is
a research center not a it's like Carl Hayden used to say there's show
horses and workhorses and I think the media rights center is a workhorse.
It's more important to get good data from them and do good research. Do
people come here they're expecting it to be much more impressive.
I think it is impressive to people that are really interested in
meteorites ah That that only read about or see tiny pieces of things and
when they can see the bigger stuff um It impresses them. So you don't
think it needs a big fancy building.
I think if we had money for a big fancy building we put into research
facilities although they get Out of date in five or 10 years to. But I I
think the important thing is Is the preservation of the meteorites and the
understanding that this is not a 10 year or 50 or 100 year thing this goes
on and on and on. And
there is a funny thing in the bottom of the NSF agreement with A. S. U.
Which says that that if a s you no longer is interested in taking care of
the media rights they shall be transferred at no cost to them to one of
the other Arizona institutions. So I'm sure a issue is not particularly
interested in sending the meteorites to Tucson. Although they might like
to get them. So we couldn't just sell them. We cannot tell them. Do you
have any idea what the value of that
millions and millions? It's it's difficult. You know it's kind of a silly
thing to think about because there are there's an open market in
meteorites
but our collection would be worth so much that no one could afford to buy
it. So um you're not allowed to sell it. We're not allowed to sell it
anyway. Yeah that's probably good the way somebody would want to sell it
well along those same lines though. What about the commercial thing?
Because in Tucson there is a huge gym show and they sell meteorites. Can
you tell us a little bit about that? And if that is a problem? Well the
problem the I guess the the good news is that people are interested in
meteorites and out looking for them And right now they're finding them all
the media rights from Antarctica go to the Smithsonian that the United
States collects but they are finding meteorites in North africa in the
deserts and private dealers get these meteorites. The thing that's good is
they're finding some and they find some from the moon and they find some
from mars and they find other interesting meteorites. The bad thing is
that they run prices up so high that scientific museums can't afford them.
Okay down the road. I think what will happen if very wealthy collectors
buy collections of meteorites they'll donate them to the university. But
these dealers also cut them up and slice them up so they're not so they're
not treating them uh quite right with respect to trace element chemistry
and stuff like that. See what we what we dream about is getting a nice
fresh meteorite, picking it up, putting it in the can, putting dry
nitrogen in it and prevent it from degrading or something like that. But
and they're not doing that because they make their living selling media
rights. And and of course that hurts us a little bit when people um bring
meteorites in that are really meteorites because they can go on the
internet and they said well these things are worth this much money. And my
attitude is well that's what that's what they're asking whether they're
getting it is another question. I mean it may be so I think right now in
history we have a pulse in in the prices being up and people being
interested. But but It won't last forever. And eventually they'll they'll
make their way back to collection just like the 1490-1 that I have In our
collection then those early ones from the early 1800s. See you shepherd
collected you know. Ah We have to dance with the devil to survive I guess.
Let's see. I was gonna ask you why would get this? And we'll go back to
some of the things you just mentioned about how do you see a s you change
over the years that you've been? Well of course the mechanical change is
that again my friend Harold Homer Durham did away with the streets and
turned things into a mall and I think he had a tremendous sense of what a
university should look like and
and made made us a really nice campus, not just another urban university
or city university chopped up with with streets and then of course we've
seen all the buildings built and I was on the library committee when they
designed the new science library which is a pretty building. And
personally I think that if you have pretty facilities it makes the
students like them better and be more interested in studying you know. Um
So it's just physical growth in in in that sense when I first came the
faculty knew each other now maybe it's too big. Maybe the times have
changed the way I used to put it bypassed ned walk or frank kush on the on
the mall. They'll say hello to me. I suspect football coaches have come
and gone. Who had no idea who I am.
Did you ever think when you came here that it would get to be this big
university? I don't think we necessary I had plenty to do. I wasn't
thinking of things like that. I just like to dig in and help us. You the
best I can tell us about your mentioning some of the things that you did
here to help. Well I would think a kind of a cute one is when I was
president of the faculty ah they when they built the current state
retirement system and the standard retirement option for academic people
can be Tia. When I came from Wesley and I had been on Tia crept and so I
went down as president of faculty to lobby the senate and and now we have
a flashback when I first came here there was a fact assistant professor in
chemistry named Clarence Carpenter and his father was president of the
state senate and he told me that if any time I needed a favor talk to
Harold guess who was the powerful senator from Yuma and say Carpe
Carpenter sent me And so when I went down there they held the hearing and
gifts said oh you know we worked all this out about the retirement which
by the way I kept and stayed on and now you people meaning the university
wants something else and then he called the recess and I went up to him at
the recess and I said well Carpe Carpenter told me if I ever needed a
favor just to say it to you. He called the committee back into order and
said I've thought it over and it sounds okay to me.
That's how politics, that's how politics used to work. So that you ask.
Another thing I like the student paper I I like getting a chance to work
on the moon rocks. And then recently I got noticed that they named an
asteroid after me. So for me it was rather nice because the name more was
taken when an asteroid is found to give it a number. So mine originally
was 1982 d. Q. found in 1982. And then after they spotted three times then
they give it a number 5046 and then they can give it a name. So I got a
letter email saying that they had named 5046 Carlton More all run together
because more was taken. So I get the whole thing. The only thing I was
worried about is that if my grandchildren tell their teachers that my
grandfather has an asteroid named after him, they'll probably say come on
go sit in the corner. But But last week which is in October uh 2003 I went
back to Alfred where I'd gone to school and they have a very nice um
astronomical observatory there. Uh And they actually I didn't realize they
could do this. He can put his telescope right on me because I happened to
be in the sky at that time. Not on the other side of the earth or
something. And of course all I look like is a little speck of light but
there I am there I am going around the sun up there. Hopefully you'll keep
going around the sun and not crashing anything become a meteorite.
Well, I just hope I'm not the one that like the movies that crashes into
the earth.
Would be ironic. You mentioned you wrote a book with, Yes, I, my student
Everett Gibson way back in the beginning organized the trip down through
the Grand Canyon by boat and, and we think we're fairly close to being in
the 1st 1000 people to go through the Grand Canyon. And then when Burt
Fireman here was a good friend of Barry's when Barry wanted to write his
book on the Grand Canyon and the pictures. Then he asked me to write
part of the book on the geology of the Grand Canyon. So there's a Barry
Goldwater is the prime author on his trip through the Grand Canyon. And
then I have the story and they're on the geology and of anthropologist
named Howry I think was at Prescott College at the time, wrote one on the
, on the anthropology of the Grand Canyon. So that's nice too. So did you
get to know Barry working on the book. Well, yeah. And then uh um, I have
an interesting story then when Nasa was beginning not to be funded, They
wrote to us and said, well, talk to your congressman and senators. I said
to barry that the scientists are worried that we're not getting enough
support for Nasa. And he said, well, don't talk to me. He said, I vote yes
every time he said talk to the, those other guys because there's no
problem with me. So that's what I reported back and Barry said there's no
problem.
What was he like? Well, I, I like him because he's just blunt and honest
like that. He just
did what he wanted.
And of course he loved Arizona and he liked the Grand Canyon and things
like that. What was it like going down the Grand Canyon when you went, did
you have the big pontoon boats? We had pontoon boats at the time, but
there were so many rules. So for example, there was a lot of driftwood and
they had built fires on the beaches. They don't do that anymore. And um,
all the rules haven't appeared yet. What about as a geologist? Oh, it's a
wonderful thing to see. Of course. And it's probably better for geologists
going down because you know what you're seeing as opposed to someone just
taking a trip. I've always thought if you do a thing like that, you have
to read about it and understand it then you have to do it. And then you've
got to go back and read about it again. I've been down twice. So I ah that
helps too because then you know what's coming around the bend that you
didn't look fast enough last time and things like that. I think having you
on the trip would be interesting to. Well actually the second time I went
down I was with the whole group from the U. S. Geological Survey in
Flagstaff. So that was it was a busman's holiday.
Anything else that we didn't ask you about that? We should have. No I
think I think my my big contribution to A. S. U. Has to be the meteorite
collection. But I've tried hard over my time here to be a good citizen and
teach well.