A collection of tributes to Mac from former students, colleagues and friends

Alexander Robert McBirney July 18, 1924 – April 7, 2019

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Tribute to be published in EOS, Transactions of the American Geophysical Union Alexander R. McBirney (1924-2019) Former West Point graduate and coffee grower transformed igneous petrology and volcanology. Dana Johnston, Dennis Geist, Tony Morse and Steve Sparks Alexander R. McBirney (Mac), a pioneer in the application of physical reasoning and fluid dynamics in physical volcanology and igneous petrology, passed away on April 7, 2019. Over the course of a scientific career that began at the dawn of plate tectonic theory, and spanned some 50 years, he played a key role in our understanding of the physics of magma chamber evolution and the volcanism characteristic of hot spot and subduction zone settings. Mac grew up in California and attended the United States Military Academy at West Point for his undergraduate studies. He had a great sense of humor and a wry wit and always prided himself on having been in the last class that had to demonstrate its prowess leading a cavalry charge wielding a sword on horseback to graduate. From there he took his young family to Nicaragua where he tried his hand running a coffee plantation that he and his crew literally hacked out of the jungle. It was in Central America where he happened upon UC-Berkeley volcanologist Howell Williams who convinced him to leave the coffee plantation to others and join him in the Bay Area for his doctoral studies. Upon completing his dissertation, he joined Scripps Institution of Oceanography literally in the earliest days of plate tectonics. When the University of Oregon came looking for the first members of its newly conceived Center for Volcanology, he answered the call, serving as the Center’s first director and remaining at this institution for the next five decades. Under Mac’s leadership, the Center’s research soon put the University of Oregon on the global map of volcanology and petrology research powerhouses. Among his best-known work in the Center’s early years were experimental studies of the physical properties of igneous rocks and their melts and classic field studies of the Skaergaard layered mafic intrusion in east Greenland and the volcanoes of the Galapagos Archipelago. This latter work was an outgrowth of a 60-scientist expedition to the Galapagos Islands in 1960, organized by the California Academy of Sciences, that Mac had the good fortune to participate in, together with Howell Williams and Alan Cox. This resulted in the publication of GSA Memoir 118 (McBirney and Williams, 1969), a classic study of ocean island volcanism and petrology, which has withstood the test of time. It also led to a lifetime of collaborations, as he introduced others to that remarkable archipelago. Mac was a brilliant and original thinker and in many ways was ahead of his time. He was among the first to interpret heat flow observations at ‘midoceanic rises’ in terms of magmatic intrusion (McBirney, 1963), and to propose that dewatering of subducting slabs likely fluxes melting in subduction zones (McBirney, 1965). He also recognized the lack of good data on key physical

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properties of igneous rocks and their melts like viscosity, surface tension, density and thermal conductivity. His 1973 paper with T. Murase (Murase and McBirney, 1973) went a long way to rectify this situation and remained a classic and a very influential paper in the 1970’s and 1980’s. He was particularly well known for his recognition that geochemical stratification could develop in magma chambers via sidewall crystallization leading to double diffusive convection, using the Skaergaard layered mafic intrusion in east Greenland as his type example. He built on this work in proposing that such crystallization could result in fractionation of liquid from crystals at a time when most attention was focused on the opposite scenario (McBirney et. al., 1985). He indeed played a major role in recognition of the importance of fluid dynamics in igneous petrology. He also enjoyed a good argument and was sometimes a contrarian, often delivering his views tongue-in-cheek with a twinkle in the eye. Indeed, many igneous geochemists will remember his fictive manuscript, using his nom de plume: Bostok, Derek, 1973, The holium-thulium ratio of kuselite and seafloor spreading: Trans. Phil. Soc. Agua Blanca, 97, 892-897. On a more serious note, he provoked enormous controversy in his later studies of the Skaergaard Intrusion when he pointed out (e.g., McBirney and Sonnenthal, 1990), that many of the outcrop- and grain-scale features appear inconsistent with crystal fractionation by settling or gravity currents, upending a generational paradigm. Instead, he proposed that many of those features are created by near-solidus material transfer (metasomatism) and self-organization. Mac was of another generation and will always represent for many of us one of the last of the golden age of exploration. He was a man of many talents and one with wide-ranging interests. His facility with languages, French, Spanish, German and English, enriched his travel and lent itself to many international collaborations and several highly regarded translations, including F.A. Fouque’s 1879 book on Santorini: Santorini et ses Eruptions (Santorini and its Eruptions, 1999, Translated and annotated by A.R. McBirney, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 495 pp.). Outside of science, he was a skilled cabinet maker, a model train enthusiast and an accomplished bookbinder, skilled in the old ways of the craft. Mac was also the founding editor of the Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research. He was a fellow of the American Geophysical Union, the Geological Society of America, the American Academy for the Advancement of Science and was awarded the Bowen Award of the VGP section American Geophysical Union in 1990. Mac is survived by his wife Carmen and daughters Anne and Christine. Dana Johnston (email: adjohn@uoregon.edu) Earth Sciences, University of Oregon; Dennis Geist, Division of Earth Sciences, National Science Foundation; Tony Morse, Geosciences, University of Massachusetts; Steve Sparks, Earth Sciences, University of Bristol.

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Professor Dana Johnston, University of Oregon, colleague; and major recipient of Mac’s generosity and support as a brand-new junior faculty member beginning in 1986 Okay, since I’m compiling this collection, I get to go first!! And…I want to begin with this photo showing Mac in the front-row-center, surrounded by the rest of the faculty members of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Oregon at that time.

L to R: front row: Harve Waff, David Schmidt, Gene Humphreys, Mac, Kathy Cashman, Josh Roering, Dana Johnston; front row on stairs: Ewart Baldwin, Sam Boggs Jr., Mark Reed (down low), Greg Retallack (up high), Paul Wallace, Ryoske Motani (interstitial), John Logan; back row on stairs: Norm Savage, Dan Weill, Doug Toomey, Jack Rice, Dave Krinsley, Bill Orr. Well…..my Mac story revolves around my initial hiring, in Spring, 1986. Mine was one of the most sought-after job openings in the country that year and, to my continued amazement, I was offered the job. Of course, I immediately accepted because, my God, it was the University of Oregon, the famed Center for Volcanology and McBirney’s department!! However, and this is a big however, Mac was on sabbatical and out of the country when this faculty search transpired. Thus, I had never met the man prior to my arrival as his new colleague in a field very close to his own. And, wouldn’t you know it, I was given a corner office in the Volcanology Building, with metamorphic petrologist Jack Rice to the east, and Mac my neighbor to the north!

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Well, after moving into my second-floor office, I would arrive each morning on my bicycle and anxiously look out the elevator door to see if Mac’s office was open with the lights on. This went on for several days with no result and then one day, behold, Mac was in! So, I parked my bike in my office and then sheepishly approached his ajar door and knocked. He was extremely welcoming and, after shaking hands and looking me up-and-down, he invited me to sit down, as he wanted to welcome me to the department and wondered how he could help me get settled. Buoyed by this warm reception, I inquired of professor McBirney whether I had it right that people called him ‘Mac’? His reply was what I came to know was classic Mac. He said to me, a complete stranger just minutes earlier, and with a completely expressionless face, that “his friends did”, and he left it at that, with no indication whatsoever whether this would be an appropriate sobriquet for me to use. As it happened, I took a chance and referred to Mac as Mac from that first day forward and he was never anything but the most gracious, generous and supportive senior faculty mentor one could hope to have, and eventually seek to emulate. And, before ‘yielding the floor’, I offer one more departmental group shot, this one from a 2006 faculty luncheon, with Mac now front-center on the stairs:

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Professor Sir Stephen Sparks, University of Bristol, UK, colleague Thanks for sending the sad news of Mac’s passing. He was without doubt one of the most influential and significant figures in petrology and volcanology of the last several decades. His research on Skaergaard, contributions in physical volcanology and pioneering ideas on magma physics come immediately to mind. He also wrote a super text book and translated the Fouque book on Santorini, the latter showing his scholarship and admiration of past giants of petrology (of course including Wager). He was at times a brilliant and original thinker. His pioneering of double diffusive convection in magma chambers played a major role in recognition of the importance of fluid mechanics in igneous petrology. He also enjoyed a good argument and was sometimes a contrarian, often delivering his views tongue-in-cheek with a twinkle in the eye. I don’t have to hand the collected works of his nom de Plume and alter ego Derek Bostok. I recollect his teasing of geochemists with his discussions on holmium-thulium ratios but the only reference I can find is: Bostok, Derek, 1973, The holmium-thulium ratio of kuselite and seafloor spreading: Trans. Phil. Soc. Agua Blanca, 97, 892-897. I have as yet been unable to find the actual journal (!), but wonder if there is an actual manuscript buried deep in Mac’s archives! In the “Bostok affair” Derek wrote an editorial in JVGR supporting Haroun Tazieff’s views on the evacuation of Basse Terre during the 1976 Guadeloupe crisis. This was very controversial at the time leading to vigorous debate, but in many ways was therapeutic for the volcanological community. Mac sometimes acknowledged Derek in his papers, including those on Skaergaard. I remember Mac as kind and fascinating with his many anecdotes of past adventures. I recall him and Carmen welcoming me to their house for a congenial supper during a visit to Eugene and taking me and Herbert Huppert on a wonderful field trip around Crater Lake. I also appreciated his support for Herbert Huppert, Stewart Turner and me in developing the double diffusive convection notions to which Mac contributed significantly with his work on development of geochemical stratification by sidewall crystallization in magma chambers. Professor Josef Dufek, University of Oregon, current director of Center for Volcanology Alexander R. McBirney was a luminary in the field of volcanology and founded the Center for Volcanology at the University of Oregon in 1965. He was an innovator at a critical time in the study of volcanology, incorporating new ideas in geochemistry, geophysics and petrology into the problem of understanding how magmas ascend and erupt. He was the author of two widely used textbooks, trained a generation of volcanologists, and was a founder of the Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research. He was an author of several other books and his scholarly contributions included works on magma mixing, material properties of melts, lunar magma evolution, and the role of volcanism in subduction systems at a time when plate tectonics was just emerging as a theory. He had a reputation for challenging established ideas (including some of his own) and his attitude toward progress in science is probably best summed up by his response to receiving the highly regarded Bowen award in 1990 “…I think it is great to see so many entrenched ideas being challenged. It is impossible to make any headway until we rid ourselves of a lot of long-cherished beliefs….It is very healthy, and in the future we will look back on these years as one of the great periods of geology”.

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Professor Bruce Marsh, The Johns Hopkins University, colleague Just last evening as I was showing some guests the beautifully-bound books that Mac did for me, I saw your message about his death. Needless to say, he was quite a man. We were very close for many years, and I saw many intimate sides to him. We often roomed or stayed together here and there, including stays here at our home with Carmen. He was a man who was not afraid to upset the applecart with a new idea. He had the courage of his convictions. I harbor nothing but fondness for the man. He was clearly one of a kind. Professor Allan Kays, University of Oregon, colleague On making difficult a traverse near the northern contact of the Skaergaard intrusion with Tertiary over Archean.....Mac and I found ourselves going upward as well as laterally across the north face of the intrusion. After a while we both looked down…..we were maybe 400 feet up on a steepening cliff, and knew that no falling was possible if we wanted to walk out of the area!......and we were in snow nearly to our knees. Finally, we saw a way to double back and get to a more negotiable path. But we still had a snowy steep cliff face to get there. We started to go and it was "tromp tromp” -- but very slowly and carefully. Finally, I stopped and started to laugh. Mac said…..what's going on?? I said ---look ahead and down... we were on level ground and there was no snow……We were both extremely stressed and had been going at a pace of one step after another…..very slowly, and hadn't even noticed the change! The other instance involved Mac falling into a crevasse. I think it was in 1974…...an introduction to the Skaergaard with Mac on a traverse with the whole group. We came to a snow-covered glacier and started to cross very cautiously in the snow over ice (and crevasses!). Someone had a ski pole and was using it to test the terrain under the snow for crevassing---but very slowly. Finally, Mac had had enough of it and said, this is nuts, I'm going across--and started walking---and suddenly disappeared......into a crevasse. We hurried to the hole--and sure enough there was Mac--down maybe 15-20 feet in the crevasse. Skinned up a bit--maybe bleeding in the forehead--but intact and apparently just a bit worse for wear & tear. We had a rope--I think Martin, Mac's son was carrying it. Martin was a climber and came along on the trip mainly for that reason. He was let down the crevasse a ways--and then he was on his own. Got the rope around Mac and we got him up and out--the worse for wear--but not terribly. We all then realized how close to disaster we all were--but don't think Mac fell just to show us the danger!! Professor Herbert Huppert, University of Cambridge, UK, colleague Mac was a fabulous, talented, insightful, witty man, from whom I learnt a lot. About 20 years ago he was a visiting lecturer in Earth Sciences to undergraduates at a University where I was also. I attended the lectures and sat at the back, taking it all in. After a number of lectures, he mentioned that small crystals fall through magma at what is called the Stokes speed, And, he wrote the formula on the board: V=2g’a2/(9*n). I remember checking this very carefully, and

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he was absolutely correct. In addition, he described the meaning of each symbol clearly. At the end of the lecture — when we were due to have lunch together — he walked up to me with his head in his hands. What an error; what an error, he wailed. What error, I replied, curiously? The Stokes fall speed for a small particle, was his anguished reply. No Mac, I assured him, I checked the formula very carefully. You wrote it down absolutely correctly. He sighed: the mistake was writing down a mathematical formula. I could see the look in the faces of all the undergraduates, he said. Only you seemed not perturbed. Professor Mike Garcia, University of Hawaii, colleague My first real adventure with Mac was a death march along the west side of the Three Sisters. It was amazing to see the geology but even more amazing to hear the stories at night after he had a few drinks of his days in central America after leaving West Point. He told us about trying to stop a smoking vent from killing the local coffee plants and how it almost killed him. He said that while in the hospital afterwards, Howell Williams came to visit him and said "Kid, if you want to learn how to put out volcanoes, come to Berkeley for grad school." And the rest was history. Dr. Kent Brooks, Copenhagen Museum of Natural History, colleague Indeed sad - I always remember Mac for his anecdotes, including the one about the last cavalry charge of the US Army. Mac was always extremely kind to me and we had a very good relationship. Professor Bill Leeman, Rice University, colleague …….a remarkable man! UC-Berkeley (Mac’s Ph.D. alma mater) web page posting EPS alumnus, Alexander McBirney (Mac), 1961 PhD, passed away April 7, 2019. Mac was a pioneer in physical volcanology, making seminal contributions to understanding layered intrusions, magma rheology, and hot spot volcanism. Mac was a West Point graduate. From there he took his young family to Nicaragua where he created a coffee plantation in the jungle. It was here that he met Prof. Howell Williams who persuaded him to come to Berkeley for his PhD studies. A few years after graduating he moved to the University of Oregon to serve as the first director of the Center for Volcanology. He was the founding editor of the Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research. His scholarship was recognized with the AGU Bowen award in 1990.

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Professor Greg Retallack, University of Oregon, colleague I remember Mac as a scholar and a gentleman, which I consider admirable even in this day and age. We shared an interest in Charles Darwin from his time on the Galapagos Islands, and also jointly translated from French a textbook on developmental biology. Mac was ever gracious with computer programs to calculate mineral modes. His atomic absorption laboratory staffed by his daughter Christine, provided numerous excellent chemical analyses in my early days here. He had a wry sense of humor, for example when arriving at the Dee Wright Observatory, he announced. “There are many interesting geological features to be seen from here. There is one over there, another over here, and more down there.” Then silence as the students looked confused, then laughed, and asked “What about that one?” It was on the same trip I believe that he was such a good sport when he awoke on the second day to find that students had drunk his six-pack of beer. Professor Craig White, Boise State University, former Mac student (Ph.D, 1980) More than anyone else, Mac played the major role in shaping my career in geology. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to know and work with this extraordinary man. When I think of the many ways Mac influenced the course of my career, one of the things that comes to mind is a spring day in 1974 when I stopped by Mac’s office to discuss some issue related to my thesis work in the Western Cascades. When we were done, and almost as an afterthought, he casually mentioned that I should come along on the Skaergaard expedition that was planned for that summer, noting that “no petrologist should miss an opportunity to see the Skaergaard”. In typical Mac fashion, details about the logistics, timing or cost of the trip were never mentioned, but when we parted it was understood that I would be going to Greenland. Over the next 20 years, Mac’s generous invitation would lead to two more Greenland expeditions and result in some of the most memorable and fruitful experiences of my life. Now, more than 40 years later, I realize more than ever how fortunate I was to be associated with such an exceptional teacher and mentor. Of the many lessons I learned from Mac, perhaps the most valuable was that, for all the importance we rightfully place on rigorous scientific inquiry, geology is also a delight and an adventure. Dr. Dave Draper, Johnson Space Center, former UO student (Ph.D., 1991) While Mac’s passing is certainly sad, he definitely got his money’s worth at that age… I completely agree that he came from a bygone era. I’ll always be grateful for him stepping up on my behalf when he did…… …….In 1993, I was in my first postdoc after graduating from UO, at the University of Bristol in the UK. Mac was in the country to deliver the William ‘Strata’ Smith Lecture of The Geological Society (UK). Bristol volcanologist/petrologist Steve Sparks had a field trip to the Scottish isle of

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Mull already set up with students and postdocs set to spend several days hiking around the spectacular exposures of shallow intrusive rocks, and Mac came out and joined us on the trip. There were lively outcrop-side arguments and discussions about emplacement mechanisms and the like (Mac and Steve didn’t exactly see eye to eye on many such topics), but what I remember most is one rainy afternoon where we were all slogging up the steep hillside in our boots and rain gear, and here’s Mac in street shoes with a light windbreaker over his arm, trotting up the hill, easily outpacing most of the crew. It was an eye-opener to find myself struggling to keep up with a guy thirty years my senior! The attached photo is from that day with Mac, once again with that all-knowing smile.

Dave Draper with Mac, Isle of Mull Autumn 1993 Professor Thomas Giachetti, Univ. of Oregon, the next generation of UO volcanology faculty Unfortunately, I did not have a chance to meet Mac but reading your email gives me a good overview of the type of person he was. As a tribute to him, my group and I will read his paper with T Murase in 1970 about the factors governing the formation of pyroclasts, when we meet next week.

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Professor Tony Morse, University of Massachusetts, colleague, dear friend and sparring partner One Spring night Mac stayed with us in Pelham and spied a nice old book wasting away in the living room. So, with permission he took it home. And a year or so later he re-appeared with it newly bound as only Mac could do it: a prize work elegantly preserved. I guess that applies to Mac, himself: a prize work elegantly preserved. He was a real phenomenon and a generous, handsomely gifted collaborator and opponent.

Dirge from Cymbeline (Wm. Shakespeare) (Submitted with the suggestion that Mac was one of the golden lads)

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun, Nor the furious winter’s rages;

Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone and ta’en thy wages; Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney sweepers, come to dust. Fear no more the frown o’ th’ great; Thou are past the tyrant’s stroke: Care no more to clothe and eat; To thee the reed is as the oak: The scepter, learning, physic, must All follow this, and come to dust. Fear no more the lightning flash, The all dreaded thunder stone; Fear no slander, censure rash; Thou has finished joy and moan. All lovers young, all lovers must CWm. Sonsign to thee, and come to dust. No exorcisor harm thee, Nor no witchcraft charm thee! Ghost unlaid forbear thee, Nothing ill come near thee, Quiet consummation have, And renowned be thy grave!

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Professor Jon Castro, Johannes Gutenberg-Universitat Mainz, former UO student (Ph.D., 1999) I would like to express my gratitude and respect for a great professor, Alexander R. McBirney, who passed away recently. Professor McBirney taught his students how to think critically, to challenge theories, and most importantly how to be adventurous. McBirney’s comprehensive approach to studying magmatic systems as physical, chemical, and temporal entities is groundbreaking and rarely practiced in Earth Science today. I was fortunate enough to arrive at the University of Oregon in the early nineties, when the Department of Earth Sciences had just accepted a large group of graduate students who were keen to start working in the beautiful natural volcanic province that is the State of Oregon. The department was full of energy, and I wanted to learn as much as I could about petrology and volcanology. I thus gravitated towards the most enthusiastic professors in these fields, and ironically, it was Alexander McBirney—a professor nearing retirement—who offered one of the most stimulating graduate courses I took. The course, entitled “Layered Igneous Intrusions”, was the last one that Professor McBirney would teach at the U of O. Also attending the class was McBirney’s colleague and renowned petrologist, Sven Maalfe, which should have been a sign that I would soon be in over my head. McBirney was, however, a master teacher and, sensing the mix of student backgrounds, he taught by the Socratic method, probing us with questions and creating dialog, and telling us stories about his and others’ findings on formations like the Skaergaard, Bushveld, and Stillwater complexes. I couldn’t get enough. I learned a lot from Professor McBirney about the philosophy of science and methods, and paradoxically, this didn’t come at the expense of scientific detail. In just three months, McBirney covered such complicated topics as the Bagnold effect, constitutional supercooling, the Soret effect, double diffusive stratification, and positive and negative fractionation density. It was as modern a petrology course as could have been taught, even by today’s standards, some 25 years later. Professor McBirney’s enthusiasm for experimentation was infectious, and often poured out into the hallways of the Volcanology building. I once passed by McBirney’s office when he called out to me to help carry out an experiment. He was holding a large plastic tube filled with black and white solids immersed in a heavy liquid; these materials turned out to be Skaergaard pyroxene and plagioclase crystals that he separated by hand, along with heavy syrup to represent interstitial melt. He told me to shake the mixture vigorously for 3 minutes to see if the crystals would separate. Much to my surprise, this simple experiment did in fact result in the separation of the light and dark minerals, thereby providing a qualitative (and alternative!) explanation for “modal layering” in the Skaergaard intrusion. Professor McBirney went on to explain to me that not all layering in the Skaergaard originated from the same process, an insight that sticks with me today.

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Mac receiving a bouquet of flowers and sharing a bottle of champagne with his students on the last day of the last class he ever taught at the University of Oregon: Layered Igneous Intrusions. (L to R: Sven Maaloe, Jon Castro, Anita Ho, Mac, Alison Cridland, Roland Goodgame, Mike Dewey) Perhaps the most important lesson that I learned from Professor McBirney was to be adventurous. In one example of this, McBirney introduced me to the late Francois Le Guern, a.k.a. “Fanfan”, a French gas geochemist who once proposed that in order to mitigate Mount Merapi’s dome hazards one must use explosives to undermine the precariously perched lavas! Fanfan, at McBirney’s recommendation, invited me to join his team to climb Mount Rainier to measure volcanic gases in Rainier’s famed summit ice caves. Why McBirney suggested I do this is beyond me—I had never climbed a mountain—but I suspect he knew more about my abilities than I did. Sensing that this would be a difficult and likely dangerous endeavor, I sheepishly declined the offer, citing a bad feeling in my stomach and the even more noticeable yellow streak down my back. Professor McBirney was not at all impressed and implored me to “go and represent U of O Volcanology on that mountain!” I bucked up and, armed with McBirney’s crampons and blue down sleeping bag, went on Fanfan’s expedition. Despite some mishaps, the trip was a success, I learned a lot about field work, and I think that is all that mattered to “Mac” and “Fanfan”. As I thumb through the pages of my well used copy of McBirney’s “Igneous Petrology”, 2nd Ed., I can’t help but feel proud to have been one of Alexander R. McBirney’s students. I am sure that his spirit will live on in many ways. For now, I’ll keep admiring the beautiful art and science captured in the many hand-drawn photomicrographs that grace the pages of his book.

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From the ‘Layered Mafic Intrusion Research Community’ The legendary Mac is no longer with us. Commiserations to Mac’s many surviving friends and proteges. He was a truly unique man, a great wit and an inspiring scientist, as well as being the inventor of the unforgettable concept of doubly defective confusion. We trust that his alter ego, Derek Bostok, lives on wherever there is a holmium-thulium ratio to be measured. Professor Dennis (Denny) Geist, University of Idaho; National Science Foundation, former Mac student (Ph.D., 1985) I met Mac the week before I started graduate school, not realizing that he would become one of the most influential people in my life. He not only taught me about magma and volcanoes, but how to write, how to be creative, and how to think. That first meeting was at the start of the famous Death March, a backpacking field trip in the Three Sisters Wilderness that Mac designed “to teach kids from Indiana what a volcano looks like.” Although I fancied myself a pretty good field jockey at the time, Mac taught me two important lessons on that trip. The first was an assignment to map and find the buried vent of a rhyodacite lava. After measuring dozens of foliations and flow direction indicators and otherwise overthinking the problem, I professed that I simply could not figure out where the vent was. “Lava most commonly flows downhill” is a lesson wryly spoken by Mac that I won’t forget. Several days later, and very late in the day, we pulled up to an outcrop and illuminated it with the headlights. Mac - “Dennis, what do you think that contact is?” Me - “There is clay in there, so I think it’s a paleosol.” Mac - “Perhaps it’s a fault gouge. You should observe more carefully.” Mac, after my 5 minutes of careful observation – “What do you think now?” Me – “It’s obviously fault gouge.” Mac – “You should be more observant. It is clearly a paleosol.” Such was the dry sense of humor. I was able to recover from this performance, and graduate school was basically a University of McBirney for me. Mac’s igneous petrology class was masterful, the prelude to his textbook, and he had an unequaled rock collection. The pedagogy was more classical than today’s trends, but generations of Oregon students had the good fortune to learn the subject from the maestro. I also had the opportunity to work as Mac’s research assistant at a time when some extraordinarily creative research was going on, largely in collaboration with his closest colleague, Brian Baker. They were pioneers in the application of fluid dynamics to magmatic process, developing and testing the hypothesis that sidewall crystallization was an effective mechanism of fractionating melt from crystals, leading to zoned magma bodies. It was also an exciting time because personal computers were first becoming ubiquitous. Mac saw their power and led an effort to develop a series of programs (apps, in today’s language) that could be applied to both research and teaching, and the set of programs was distributed with the first edition of his text.

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Nowhere did I learn more geology from Mac than in the field. In addition to several trips to the Cascades, I had the good fortune of working in the Galapagos with him, on a satellite project to my dissertation research (so far as I know, he never saw my field area, which was an entire island). We climbed Volcan Alcedo, where after trying to sleep in the rain with a thin blanket and tarp that was half the size it should have been, we found rhyolitic pumice and obsidian lava. This was the only known occurrence in this basaltic archipelago. Mac was kind enough to hand the project over to me, and it made my career, still the best project I’ve ever worked on. Traversing the Skaergaard with McBirney is a lifetime opportunity for a petrologist; he taught one how to observe. I was there on one of his last campaigns. Although the overall structure of the intrusion is easy to understand, Mac realized that it is the details that matter. To enormous controversy, he pointed out that in fact many of the outcrop and grain-scale features are inconsistent with crystal fractionation by settling or gravity currents, upending a generational paradigm. Instead, he showed that many of those features are created by near-solidus material transfer (metasomatism) and self-organization. He visited Idaho early in my career there (1993 or so) and made a huge impression on the graduate students by emphasizing, “we do not understand the first thing about how melt is extracted from crystals. That is up to your generation.” Although petrology accepted a model of viscous compaction for a generation, new results call that hypothesis into question, and we are back to Mac’s proposition in 2019. Mac was not always an easy person to work with. He famously drove his graduate students and could be parsimonious with both financial support and compliment. Like most disruptive ideas, his were not always well received by the community, and he was the center of contention. But that would make the occasions of praise a lifetime achievement. Such was the case when I got back the first draft of a dissertation with the final comment, “Needs fixing, but really outstanding, and we need to publish all of this.” That one statement really started my career, and I owe Mac for knowing when to be critical and when to be positive. I am sorry that I cannot attend the memorial. I am not sure whether I should raise a quart bottle of Rainier Ale, aka The Green Death, which is what Mac served the graduate students after a defense or with a famous visitor, or single malt, which was the beverage reserved for my professional days. I’m sure Mac would have wanted both. Here’s to you, Mac. Professor Peter Keleman, Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, colleague Well, Mac was a provocateur who delighted in pulling one’s leg, as you know; he would tell you things that were just plausible enough to scare you to death, totally straight-faced, and leave you to figure out that they weren’t true … as a joke. I can’t remember specific examples at the moment, but those of you who knew him well will agree. So I apologize, because this story is kind of about Mac but also kind of about me. Anyway, here it is:

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He worked hard! When he would come to Woods Hole, he would pretty much stay up all night for several days in a row, using the ion probe to measure trace elements in pyroxenes from Skaergaard gabbros. This was in the 90’s, so he wasn’t young. In fact, to me he seemed quite old. When he visited, he was up to his usual tricks, telling me semi-plausible lies to see if I would notice, just for fun. So one time I decided I would get back at him. The ion probe didn’t have any digital recording; all the data came out on a printer, hard copy only. One copy. No backup. Mac had been up for a night or two and had reams of data. I was around the lab one morning, and he asked me to take the data to the photocopy machine - another almost obsolete device - to create a backup. Or maybe we had entered the PDF era by that time, and he wanted me to scan the data. I don’t really remember. Anyway, there was a big fancy copy machine (and/or scanner) with an automatic stack feeder, and I went off with Mac’s data to copy it. As I walked down the hall, an idea occurred to me. After a while, I returned to the ion probe lab, empty-handed. “I’m sorry Mac, but the copy machine destroyed all your data. I put it into the stack feeder, and it was just shredded”. For a few seconds, I thought he might have a heart attack. He wasn’t young. He clearly believed me, but he was confused, because it wasn’t obvious how this could have happened. He asked for a more detailed explanation. But he kind of croaked out this question, sort of gasping. Honestly, I was worried, so I relented, and pulled the data and the copies from my backpack. To his credit, Mac laughed. The other thing I remember was when we were working for Platinova Resources, on the gold-enriched horizon in the Skaergaard intrusion, in 1988 or 1989. There were a lot of different groups there, research and mineral exploration, and Mac was around, so he offered to lead a field trip. We went out with him, and looked at the mafic blocks near the base, and the anorthosite blocks with iron oxide haloes, and various enigmatic things, big flowering oxide structures, wavy “crescumulate bands" - nothing standard, all enigmatic things that Mac didn’t really understand. His goal was to emphasize how little any of us understood about the place, which I appreciated very much. But that’s not the point of this story. Somewhere around the cross-bedded outcrop, we stopped for lunch, and then Mac said he had to go look for the next outcrop. He said he couldn’t quite remember where it was, and we should just wait at the lunch spot while he searched. He was gone for a long time. Eventually, I went around some blocks and cliffs to take a pee, and what should I discover, but Mac lying in a sunny place, peacefully taking a nap. I didn’t wake him but went back to the group. Eventually, he appeared, and announced that he’d found the key outcrop. The field trip resumed.

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Professor Mike Dungan. Universities of Geneva and Oregon, colleague I became aware of Mac for the first time in 1969 when a class I was taking in Seattle committed to reading the Proceedings of the Andesite Conference, and some other papers by McBirney and colleagues. The Skaergaard Years were a real inspiration for me. His approach both inspired and informed my ‘comprehensive’ approach to studying volcanic systems. Truly memorable interactions included conversations with Mac at the end of the 1984 Conference on Open Magmatic Systems (Taos, NM) and the Santa Fe IAVCEI in 1989. In both instances, Mac pulled me aside and told me, in detail and with conviction, how well he thought things had gone, and he assured me that these events would have large and positive consequences. During our years in Geneva, he stopped by several times for visits in his Citroen. He always gave a well-received talk, and in one case served as a member of the jury for Fidel Costa’s thesis defense. We staged our only Swiss Thanksgiving dinner in his honor during one of these visits. He welcomed us heartily when we first moved to Eugene, and this was greatly appreciated. I agree with Dana’s comments concerning the huge impact that the arrivals of Mac and Dan Weill had on this Department. These guys put Eugene on the map with sufficient weight to keep it there after they retired. Bravo! We salute you. Mr. Richard Wilson, long-time admirer and PNW volcano enthusiast since childhood I’m not sure whether you can use any of these but, they are some of my fondest memories of A.R. McBirney. I had hoped to reminisce with him about these things, and hopefully, elicit that grin at some point this year. Not to be! And for that I am most angry at myself! I was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest and acquired an interest in volcanoes at an early age. At that time (mid-to- late 1960’s), people who referred to themselves as volcanologists were indeed, very far and in-between. When I found out there was an ACTUAL volcanologist AND a Center for Volcanology in Eugene, Oregon, I was beyond excited since I had a family member who attended U of O! At some point I thought, maybe I might be able to meet A. R. McBirney! Though I didn’t meet Mac during that time, I grew to know him from afar by reading his publications and through occasional interviews by the local/regional press about his studies, or important volcanic activity occurring somewhere in the world. By the late 1970’s, he was every bit the “hero” to me that Bart Starr, Bruce Lee, or Muhammed Ali were to my peers at that time. When Mac and Howell Williams published “Volcanology”, one of the few such titled books worldwide in 1979, I sent my Mom and Dad, who were in San Francisco on a business trip at the time of its release, on a “wild goose chase” to Freeman Publishers to get me a copy “hot off the presses”!

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One of my more profound “lessons” on how science actually works, I learned through following Mac’s papers on arc (Cascade) volcanism. During the 1970’s through early 1980’s, there was a conundrum about whether the Cascade volcanoes actually were arc-related as some of the key elements for defining them as such were missing in what we now refer to as a “data gap”. Well known models for andesitic volcanism for the time ascribed arc volcanoes mainly as the result of either partial, or complete melting of subducted slabs beneath them. When a volume devoted to petrologic and geochemical analyses of the orogenic andesite association (edited by R.S. Thorpe) was published in 1982, I eagerly “dove-in” to this treatise in which leading experts took the reader arc-by-arc around the world to present their most up-to-date findings as to the ultimate source for andesitic volcanism. All of the “experts” found at least some evidence for input from a subducted slab,…but not McBirney! I was crushed! How could my “hero” get it so wrong?! In his analysis, he did allow for “generation of magmas in the mantle wedge overlying the zone of subduction…” Over the next decade, I watched as the slab melting theory was shown to be untenable and Mac’s strongly held view emerged to become the current model for most arc magmas. I finally met Mac in 1987, at a UO Geology Department function welcoming new and returning students for the coming school year. Mac arrived fashionably late, and while I waited, I shared with the other profs my eagerness to finally meet him (maybe a little too much!). Well, when Mac finally arrived, Sam Boggs and others “slathered it on him”, telling Mac that, “I just thought he was the “Cat’s Pajamas”, and that, “I had read anything he ever wrote dozens of times!” ad infinitum! All the while, Mac gazed at me with ever widening eyes and that grin, as I wilted and turned fifty shades of pink!!! His sole remark at the end of all the gushing was, “Well,…are you disappointed?” Later, after being invited the first time, I would “drop-in” on Mac (at least on a weekly basis!) at his office “at the top of the turret” to discuss research papers I had recently read, or to show him my drawings and writings. We would talk volcanoes for an hour or more at a time. This continued for the next year (at least!). He never “flinched” and always invited me in. One day, I was discussing something with Gordon Goles to which he replied, “That’s something you should probably go ask Mac about,…but make an appointment, he hates drop-ins!” Whoops! Though he was always gracious to me. In 1982 I attended a workshop on Volcano Hazards in California where Mac was the keynote speaker. At some point, he chastened geophysicists in the room for being unable to unequivocally identify “live” magma beneath active volcanoes saying, “You know, I’m beginning to think all geophysicists are pathological liars!” to which there was an audible gasp from the audience. Later, as he gave his presentation on the 1980 re-awakening of Mount Saint Helens, (UW geophysicist) Steve Malone retorted to Mac’s aside with, “I think even a geologist can see the marked increase of seismicity depicted in this slide”. I will always remember Mac frequently ascribing an oddball value in an analysis of the Skaergaard rocks as, “probably due to Polar Bear pee”.

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Professor John Wolff, Washington State University, colleague I guess the main influence Mac had for me was the integration of 'physical' volcanology with petrology. We take it more or less for granted now (in which his enormous general influence can be seen), but back in the '70s it was unusual. The other big influences then, George Walker and Ian Carmichael, were firmly on either side, with little time for the other. Professor Sven Maalfe, University of Bergen, Norway, colleague Alexander McBirney was a first-class petrologist, among the very best. He had a great mind and a great sense of humor. I was fortunate to publish one paper with him, that I made in his lab. He will be missed! Professor Cal Barnes & Ms (Masters of science) Melanie Barnes, Texas Tech University, former Mac/UO students (Cal: M.S. (Mac, 78); Ph.D. (Kays, 1982); Melanie M.S. (Goles, 1981)) Melanie's first recollection was Mac's willingness to support Portland brewers on Friday beer call--buying pitchers of Henry Weinhard's Private Reserve for himself, Brian Baker, and a cadre of grad students. These gatherings were always interesting, and really did support the Blitz folks. The pub was next to the Mill Race, now long gone and lamented. Mel also remembers occasional meetings of seminar classes at Mac's house--a pleasant venue to discuss Hat Yoder's then-new book. I remember Mac's skepticism that anyone from a 'soft-rock' school could actually do igneous petrology. I also remember, now with some reverence, having to use Mac's even then antique triple-beam balance to weigh samples for analysis in the moisture analyzer. I thought I had steady hands until then. And finally, I remember hearing--around the campfire--about Mac's tussle with a Nicaraguan volcano: trying to stop the eruption with a ?dynamite? bomb, breaking his arm, and ultimately having no luck stopping the eruption (details a bit misty). [Ed: see earlier contribution pertaining to this event by Mike Garcia] I've been teaching university-level petrology in various forms for 38 years. The material has evolved through time, but the basics remain pretty much the same: field relations, petrography, phase equilibria, geochemistry, physical processes. I learned this approach at U of O from mentors like Mac, Al Kays, Jack Rice, Gordon Goles, and Dan Weill. It's still a great way to think about petrology. We'll be thinking about y'all on Saturday. Sadly, duties here mean that we have to stay put. Professor Allen Glazner, University of North Caroline, colleague My last time spent with Mac was at the 2010 Bostok Conference in the Sierra Nevada where a few of us showed the black rock crowd around some white rocks. Mac was a full participant except for one afternoon that involved an 8-mile hike. He wasn’t quite up for that (he was what, 85?), so I stayed behind with him. We spent a wonderful 3 or 4 hours wandering around Tuolumne Meadows, Soda Springs, and Parsons Lodge, sitting in the shade and chatting, and just hanging out. It’s a great memory.

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Professor Dick Naslund, SUNY Binghamton, former Mac student (Ph.D., 1980) I don't know where to begin in describing Mac's influence on my life, or where to end for that matter. Like most of Mac’s graduate students who went into academia, he was the most influential force shaping my career, and had a strong influence on my life during that very critical period of changing from a student to a faculty member. During the last 40 years as a faculty member, not a week has gone by in which I haven’t used something that I learned from Mac in either my teaching or my research. During that time, I have taught undergraduate or graduate courses in igneous petrology almost every year, and some years I have taught them both, but every time that I teach it, I understand it better. Many of these sudden bursts of understanding occur when I say to myself “Oh, that is what Mac was saying”. Even after 40 years, I am still learning from him. If I could be half the teacher or researcher that he was, I would consider that I had an excellent career as a petrologist.

I am sorry that I am not able to be there to say goodbye to Mac but know that I will be thinking about him today, tomorrow, and for a long time to come.

Professors Doug Toomey and Emilie Hooft, University of Oregon, colleagues

We were introduced to the Galapagos by Alex McBirney and he followed and encouraged our work there for many years. Being a tireless advocate for Galapagos research and a committed Francophile, Mac’s interest in our lab increased exponentially as our Galapagos experiment took wings and Mac realized that the lab included fluent French speakers: Emilie and Doug’s post-doc, David Jousselin. Mac could frequently be found in David’s office and Doug unwittingly assumed they were discussing science, only to find out later that Mac was seeking critiques of his French writing. As a result of Mac’s encouragement, we led several fruitful years of research in the Galapagos, resulting in publications that illuminated the plume beneath the Galapagos and that led to a growing friendship with one of Mac’s Ph.D. students, Denny Geist. Just this past year we rekindled our interests in the Galapagos region and proposed a large ocean bottom seismic experiment to investigate the connections between the Galapagos plume and spreading center. Mac’s impact on our science careers and personal friendships will be remembered fondly. And Emilie is particularly thankful for how Mac welcomed her to the department warmly and introduced her to the Eugene French speaking community with great charm.

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A second contribution from Professor Bruce Marsh, The Johns Hopkins University, colleague When I think back of all the times I spent with Mac what most comes to mind is all the different places we lunched, shared a room, or looked at rocks. And all of it always came with stories, stories rich in context and content. He relished in telling of his West Point days when each cadet had to nervously go to the board every morning to work a math or physics homework problem. He and his two roommates -- George Patton’s son and a Mr. Somoza from Nicaragua --- would relentlessly try to guess what problem they would be assigned, with little success. Each field trip or meeting with him had an added dimension of interest and fun. Sitting in a Paris café long into the evening discussing a new book on Nansen or Malraux, or trying to figure out if Foque was the first one to discover at Santorini silica enrichment by crystal fractionation, or explaining the intricacies of correct book binding, all generally washed down with good Scotch, made every encounter with Mac truly memorable. And in contrast to exploring islands off the coast of Maine in a schooner, where we shared a room, climbing over one another in the middle of the night to go to the head, or traipsing around Rum in the Hebrides from the castle, my favorite field trip was always around San Francisco where he guided me to the places where he met and courted Carmen, marrying her after two weeks, and culminating with supper where his father had been either maître d or head waiter. And, of course, his mind was like a steel trap. Traveling through the Pennsylvania countryside looking at dolerite sills, with a side trip to Gettysburg to discuss battle strategies, he looked over at a house in the country and said: “Good grief! I think that’s the guy I buy my Citroen parts from.” Sure enough, we stopped and shopped for Citroen odds and ends. And in all of this Derek Bostock was always close at hand. Mac introduced me to Derek early on and always delighted in showing me what Derek had been up to and how much he appreciated his help in carrying out reviews of manuscripts from troublesome authors. Derek never hesitated to take the heat, and occasionally someone would ask me at AGU if Derek usually attended these meetings, which of course he routinely did, and they wanted to be introduced. But Derek was a busy man and generally hard to find. Mac generously rewarded Derek’s longtime service by always including a tiny portrait of him in the lovely detailed petrographic drawings his daughter Christine prepared for his publications. Derek’s smiling, bearded face is always there, and this always pleased Derek to no end. I well know that, like all of us, Derek is deeply saddened over our loss of Mac and will certainly soon be headed for parts unknown. There was no doubt that Mac, like most of us, could be tough and exasperating when he had to be. But his gracious congeniality, generosity, sincere kindness, and infectious enthusiasm made me always go away feeling that my life had been enriched. I am a better man for having known him.

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A tribute to Mac presented at the second annual VolcOR conference held at the University of Oregon on April 11, 2019, just four days after his passing. This conference brings together graduate students with interests in volcanology from the University of Oregon, Oregon State University and Portland State University. The unusually large number of such students in the State of Oregon surely traces its origin, at least in part, to Mac’s influence, beginning in the mid-1960’s.

At the Oman ophiolite: Mac (looking downward) arranging twigs to represent

cotectics in the ternary phase diagram he scratched into a gravel bar (with Jennifer Pickering (Ph.D., 1999) and Dana Johnston)

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The first McBirney-led expedition to the Skaergaard Intrusion, east Greenland, 1971 L to R: Hugh Taylor, Gordon Goles, Lyle Henage, Mac, Richard Forrester, Mark Gettings and Dick Blank

The final McBirney-led expedition to the Skaergaard Intrusion, east Greenland, 1990

Back row L to R: Ian Parsons, Adolf Nicolas, John Wolff, Stu McCallum, Alan Boudreau, Front row: Neil Irvine, Richard St.J Lambert, Mac, Kent Brooks