Edward Grew, is a research professor and geologist at the University of Maine. The 68 year old Maine native devoted nearly his entire life to his passion of studying earth and minerals.
“I was attracted to rare minerals — boron and beryllium,” he said. “I just collected on my own. I went to a summer camp, where there was a counselor who was a grad student at Harvard. I learned quite a lot there. I didn’t have any formal study until college.”
His thirst for knowledge led him to attend Dartmouth University and later Harvard, but it didn’t stop there. His studies never stopped as he traveled around the world including Molodezhnaya Station, a soviet research station in East Antarctica.
Although Grew discovered or help discover a dozen or so new minerals, he never thought of naming any of them after himself. It wasn’t until two Russian geologists discovered a new mineral in the Chegem caldera near Mount Elbrus that it came up. Husband and wife team, Evgeny and Irina Galuskin met Grew at an International Mineralogical Association meeting a couple years ago and had shared research ever since.
The near microscopic sized mineral found was named Edgrewite and a related mineral discovered just shortly afterwards called Hydroxledgrewite. “I feel very honored,” said Grew. “I also feel quite lucky that I get two minerals. Normally only one is allowed per person nowadays, these minerals are very closely related chemically.”
More information on Edgrewite and other geological studies can be found here.