O. Frank Tuttle
June 25, 1916 - December 13, 1983
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Scientific Discipline: Geology Membership Type:
Member
(elected 1968)
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Petrologist O. Frank Tuttle focused primarily on the study of granites and feldspars, and more generally, with the stability and equilibrium relationships between rock forming minerals and liquids. He also created two experimental tools that greatly aided the mineralogical field. The first device, called a “Tuttle Press,” advanced the global studies of the stability of rock-forming minerals. His second invention, called the “Tuttle Bomb,” was a cold seal pressure vessel that made research into the stability of minerals reliable, affordable, and easy.
Tuttle received his bachelor’s degree in 1939 and master’s degree in 1940 from Pennsylvania State University in geology and mineralogy, respectively. He earned his Ph.D. in petrology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1948 with a dissertation on fluid inclusions in quartz and their use in structural petrology. Dr. Tuttle received the very first Mineralogical Society of America Award for his studies on quartz inversion in 1951. Two years later, he was appointed the head of the Department of Earth Sciences as well as a professor of geochemistry at Penn State University, later becoming the Dean of the College of Mineral Industries. In 1965, Tuttle became a professor of geochemistry at Stanford University. He received the prestigious Arthur L. Day Medal of the Geological Society of America in 1967, and the Roebling Medal of the Mineralogical Society of America in 1975.
