Roy Clarke
The Smithsonian curator who helped collect and describe the Allende meteorite in 1969 and co-discovered the mineral tetrataenite.
Key facts
- Nationality
- American
- Field
- Chemist and curator
Roy S. Clarke Jr. was a chemist who became curator of meteorites at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington.
When about two tonnes of stones fell around Pueblito de Allende in northern Mexico on 8 February 1969, Clarke was among the Smithsonian scientists who travelled there within days. Working with local people, the team collected many stones and recorded where they had landed. In 1970 Clarke and his colleagues, including Brian Mason, published the first detailed description of the fall and the meteorite. Allende became one of the most studied rocks in the world, partly because so much of it was shared.
Clarke specialised in iron meteorites and the metal in stony meteorites. In 1980, with Edward Scott, he described tetrataenite, a nickel-iron alloy with an ordered arrangement of atoms, which forms only with extremely slow cooling over millions of years. It is one of the few minerals found almost only in meteorites.
He also worked on the history of important meteorites, tracing where pieces of famous irons had gone, and helped build the Smithsonian's collection into one of the largest anywhere.