JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Remarkable South African geoscientist Stephen Edward Haggerty, who served with distinction as a research professor at Florida International University in the US, has died aged 87.

A legend in the field of diamond, kimberlite and mantle xenolith studies, Haggerty passed away on January 2 in hospital in Miami, his hometown.

He was born in Primrose, Germiston, South Africa, on April 11, 1938. 

As a former principal investigator on all Apollo manned and Soviet unmanned sample-return space programmes, his research spanned lunar sample and meteorite studies, oxide ore deposits, kimberlites, carbonatites, diamonds and upper mantle evolution.

Among his personal best achievements were the recognition of new lunar mineral, Armalcolite, which was named after the astronauts Arm(strong), Al(drin) and Col(lins).

As reported by Mining Weekly five years ago, Haggerty and Roger Youssef were responsible for Liberian diamond mining company Youssef Diamond Mining discovering a kimberlite dike deposit in the West African country.

Haggerty’s teaching style involved placing emphasis on the need to know more about the earth.

People who had the biggest influence on his career were his Germiston High School teacher, Doc Venter, who thought it more important to learn about the earth than about Boyle’s Law and Charles’ Law; and Nobel Prize winner PMS Blackett, head of the physics department, Imperial College, later Lord Blackett, and member of Churchill's war cabinet.

In an interview with Engineering News & Mining Weekly he described his biggest ever opportunity as working on the moon and his biggest ever disappointment as being beaten by the Russians to name a mineral that “we found in Paraguay and Brazil, and they found in Siberia”.

The mineral was submitted to the International Mineralogical Society at about the same time, but he accepted that it be credited to the Russians.

On a later visit to Yakutsk, the Russian delegate who had recognised and named tausonite (strontium titanate) could not believe that Haggerty had accepted their slight time priority with such good grace and gave him a big bear hug.

Haggerty’s hope for the future was for a deeper human understanding of the interior of the earth, planetary bodies, earth-like exoplanets and carbonado.

His memberships included the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Geophysical Union, Mineralogical Society of America, and Geological Society of America.

His first job was as a bench chemist at Umfolozi Sugar Mill, Mtubatuba, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, in 1957 and the size of his first pay packet was £5.

He is survived by his Ukrainian-born artist wife, Tatania.