When
In this seminar, Gene Meieran will explore the significance of museums, particularly through his journey, which highlights how a museum’s influence can go far beyond simply showcasing artifacts or exhibits.
"Museums always influenced me, from the earliest days of collecting to my involvement in both the AZ Mineral Museum (now the Alfie Norville Gem and Mineral Museum), and the Rice Northwest Museum of Rocks and Minerals.
"Fascination in the beauty, the amazement at the naturally occurring shapes, the amazing variety, led me into a professional life devoted to studying how this happened (and the benefits to our lives through exploitation of their widely divergent physical, chemical, and electrical properties)."
About the Speaker:
Gene, an Intel Senior Fellow (retired) received his Doctor’s degree in Materials Science from MIT in 1963; he chose this field as his profession directly as a result of starting to collect natural crystals as early as 1948! His undergraduate work at Purdue as well as his Master’s degree and ScD at MIT were on analyzing and characterizing the properties of single and polycrystalline materials. After receiving his degree Gene went to work for Fairchild Semiconductor in 1963, and then for Intel in 1973, where he became Intel’s second Fellow in 1984; he retired from Intel in 2009. Gene is well known in the mineral field for his contributions to many mineral museums (Harvard, Rice NW Museum, A.E. Seaman Museum, University of Arizona, Gemological Institute of America, Tellus Science Museum) as well as for his many fascinating mineral displays at Tucson and Munich shows.