Frank Spear, department chair and professor of earth and environmental sciences, has been elected as a fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). This prestigious honor is limited to no more than 0.1 percent of the AGU’s total membership each year.

“Rocks tell a story,” Spear said, surrounded by hundreds of glass-encased rock samples. It has been Spear’s lifelong mission to ensure that each rock’s story is told, and his election as a fellow of the world’s largest geophysical organization proves that his storytelling has caught the attention of colleagues around the world.

“It is really an honor,” Spear said. “I am doing what I love to do every day; not many people can say that about their job.”

Spear’s work to uncover the history of Earth’s formation has taken him around the world. His research focuses on developing techniques to analyze the mineral and chemical reactions that form the crystalline rocks that make up Earth’s crust, a branch of geology known as metamorphic petrology. 

Spear’s goal is to develop methods researchers can use to create a tectonic history of a terrain. His research looks at the record of various elements in metamorphic rocks to reconstruct a timeline of the rock’s formation.

Much of Spear’s current research is focused on the distribution of trace elements in garnet. And he is working to develop new methods for determining the pressure-temperature-time history of a terrain. 

Thanks in large part to Spear’s research, geologists now understand that trace elements preserve the history of a rock to a much larger degree than more major elements like iron, magnesium, manganese, and calcium. This work opens the field to discovery of segments of Earth’s history that were previously unknown. 

He is currently working to extend this approach to include analysis of traces of titanium in quartz, one of the world’s most common metamorphic minerals. “When we’re lucky, these new analyses begin to tell a story that we didn’t even know was there to read,” Spear said. “It’s like finding hidden pages in one of your favorite novels with entirely new details of the plot.”

Spear will receive the award at a formal award ceremony during the 2007 Joint Assembly of the AGU in Acapulco, Mexico in May 2007.

Spear began his career at Rensselaer in July 1985. He was named chair in 1999. Before coming to Rensselaer, Spear taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He earned a B.A. from Amherst College and a Ph. D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, both in geology.

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Published February 5, 2007