Editorials

I am sure that many of us remember “mineralogy” from our student days as beginning with the orthosilicate group, passing quickly through sorosilicates to beryl, then through pyroxenes and amphiboles, and on to micas, feldspars, and the silica minerals. Amphiboles were studied to exhaustion, their nomenclature (now mostly discarded) being then regarded as of prime importance. Sulfides, on the other hand, were almost completely ignored, despite their economic importance and significance, as we now know, as agents of climate cooling. In petrography classes, sulfides were classified together with oxides as “opaques” and dismissed from further consideration.

St. Helens erupted catastrophically at 8:32 a.m. on 18 May 1980 in southern Washington state, about 50 miles northeast of Portland (Oregon, USA). This eruption was preceded by a magnitude 5.1 earthquake and a subsequent landslide that are thought to have triggered the main eruption.

Looking back, my tenure finishes near to where it began—with a focus on mineral–water interfaces (Elements, “Mineral–Water Interactions,” v9n3, 2013). A recurring theme throughout the current issue is that chemical reactions at mineral surfaces likely had a role in sparking what we now experience as complex living systems. Indeed, mineral−water interfaces may reside at the heart of the ultimate scientific question—“What is the origin of life on Earth?”