Curators of the MGMH

In 1795, a donation of French specimens came from the Supreme Executive of the Republic of France, and a year later, James Bowdoin donated 150 European ornamental marble specimens, which as Waterhouse noted, filled a deficiency in “Italian lavas and volcanic marbles.” In 1807, the first meteorite in the collection was donated by Benjamin Silliman.

Waterhouse also built up Harvard’s mineralogical instrumentation and bought a brass contact goniometer in London, which may have been the first crystallographic instrument in the United States! Overall, the mineral cabinet started out as a tool for Waterhouse’s teaching as he prepared trays of specimens to use in his lectures and went on local field trips to collect minerals with his students. Following a conflict related to the Medical School, Waterhouse was removed from his position as Curator in 1809.

Joseph Green Cogswell accepted the positions of Librarian and Professor of Mineralogy and Geology in a February 12, 1821 letter. His work as Librarian from 1821-1823 was “very effective,” but in terms of the Mineral Cabinet, “there is no evidence that he undertook any curatorial duties, as was expected of him.” He did, however, make an important accession of minerals to the cabinet. In 1821, with his friend Andrew Ritchie, he purchased a collection of minerals from Mr. Bloede, a mineralogist and counselor of the King of Saxony, Germany. The Bloede collection, containing about 4,500 specimens, likely doubled the Harvard collection. The Bloede collection contained uranium minerals from the mines at Joachimstal, Saxony (now in the Czech Republic) and provided important material for researchers in the early fifties at Harvard who were studying the mineralogy and crystal chemistry of uranium. After he resigned from his position in 1823, his personal collection of about three-hundred mineral specimens were passed on to Harvard.

In 1849, Webster murdered prominent Bostonian Dr. George Parkman, likely motivated by tensions over unpaid debts involving Webster’s personal mineral collection. In 1850 he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for the murder of Parkman; “the case is still one of the most frequently cited in American criminal courts.” Overall, it is “difficult to evaluate [Webster’s] success as a teacher, since most of the accounts of him...were written after the murder that gained him eternal notoriety.”

In 1890-1891, a section of the museum dedicated to Mineralogy and Botany was built at Oxford Street and the mineral collection, housed at Boylston Hall, was transferred there; Cooke had been the “active spirit” in securing half of the building fund for Mineralogy. In 1892, the culmination of his additions were the gifts of the Hamlin Collection of Maine Tourmalines, the Garland’s Gem Minerals, and the Bigelow Agates. Professor Wolff wrote that the Hamlin and Garland collections were the foundation of the gem collection. Cooke continued on as Curator until his death two years later in 1894. The Hamlin Collection consisted of “…the so-called Hamlin Necklace of Tourmalines and a collection of eighty-seven cut tourmalines which illustrate the variety of colors of this gem as it occurred at Mt. Mica, Maine and a variety of rough crystals and drawings” and the bequest came officially into the collection thirty years later after Hamlin’s granddaughter passed away. 

In 1913 the A.F. Holden collection, containing over 6,000 specimens, was acquired. Wolff called this “the single greatest gift of minerals made during its history of one hundred and twenty years”. The Holden collection contained 2,000 micromounts and was the beginning of the Harvard micromount collection. In addition, Holden created an endowment fund, which helped to secure the future health and growth of the collections, as the MGMH still benefits from this endowment, and will continue to for future generations. Holden’s legacy at the museum did not end with this endowment in 1922;  he also donated his whole estate as the John E. and Philip Wolff Fund after his death in 1940 to be devoted to the growth and usage of the collection to which he dedicated his life.

Charles Palache came to the museum in the winter of 1895 as an assistant to Wolff; Palache lived rent-free on the fourth floor of the museum and worked rearranging the mineral collection that summer. By 1910 he had worked his way up to Professor of Mineralogy, but was not appointed Curator until Wolff retired in 1923. Palache traveled domestically, building Harvard’s New England suites. In 1904, he began building a definitive collection of Franklin, New Jersey minerals. He bought the lease of Noyes Mountain pegmatite ledge in 1917, now known as the Harvard Quarry, where mining was done for the museum. He collected material throughout New England with his students mainly for research purposes. Palache also traveled internationally and started Harvard’s Tsumeb representation when he made a detour to Tsumeb on the 1922 Shaler Memorial Expedition (after receiving money from the Trustees of the Holden Fund). He obtained 264 more Tsumeb specimens in 1935 when he bought 900 specimens from the Karabacek collection. The Karabacek collection was considered and still regarded as one of Europe’s premier mineral collections.

In 1924, Harry Berman came to the museum as an assistant to Palache. Around this time Berman acted as a war consultant, and among other things, searched for domestic localities for optical calcite, which could only be found in Iceland back them. Thanks to a specimen from California in Harvard’s collection, he was able to trace the donor through which they found a source of calcite in California. Berman came from the National Museum, and brought with him a new specimen numbering system to Harvard. Throughout his time at the museum, he was actively involved in research, and worked to improve and expand the X-Ray laboratory, an ambition he cherished. Berman was always on the watch for new techniques that could be applied to mineralogical investigation and thanks to his efforts one of the first Frantz isodynamic separators for the magnetic separation of mineral grains was brought to Harvard.

Clifford Frondel first came to Harvard as a research associate after earning his doctorate at MIT in 1939. He left Harvard during World War II, developing with Berman the use of quartz oscillator plates. He then returned to Harvard in 1946 as a professor and curator.In 1947, just the year after Frondel began his tenure, the Burrage collection of Bouglise gold and Bisbee azurites and malachites arrived at Harvard. Wolff and Palache had corresponded with Burrage, who eventually bequeathed his collection to Harvard. Burrage’s collection of outstanding crystalline golds and other specimens is well known for the “Ram’s Horn” the most unique and rare gold wire ever found. 

In 1977, Carl Francis was appointed as the first non-faculty curator of the museum. The first project he worked on was the 1978 meteorite catalog, a culmination of a meteorite rehabilitation and reorganization program. In that same year, he made one of his first major acquisitions, with the purchase of the Bannister collection of Illinois fluorite.

Francis emphasized New England material throughout his entire tenure, which is a big reason that Harvard’s New England collection is still so strong today, thanks to acquisitions such as The Phillip Morrill collection of gems and minerals in 1983. He also placed emphasis on providing researchers with New England material, which significantly enhanced mineralogical knowledge of New England minerals.

Another large achievement of his was securing offsite storage space at Fawcett Street. Some material from Alden B. Carpenter’s Crestmore collection, acquired in 1998, is stored there. Almost ten years later, Francis worked with Carpenter for months to curate his collection and organize it to optimize its research potential. This exemplifies Francis’s dedication to strengthening the museum catalogs. In another example, the museum’s Chilean minerals were reviewed prior to the 2003 purchase of the Szenics collection of Chilean minerals; he saw this review as an opportunity to strengthen the museum’s “intellectual collection.”

Overall, his biggest effort as Curator was the physical reorganization of the collections and digitization of the catalogs, especially in his last fifteen years at the museum. Francis retired from the museum in December 2011.

Another central focus of hers is public outreach and education. For example, she created and taught a Harvard summer extension class on mineralogy and gemology, brings numerous exhibits to mineral shows, and connects and engages with the public as much as possible. Alonso-Perez’s research is collections-focused: among her main research projects are the gold wire formation and composition, the nature of color in Maine tourmalines, and the origin and provenance of emerald formation. Under her tenure, two very important collections have made their way into the museum, the collection of Harvard alumna Mary Johnson, Ph.D, containing over 3,800 minerals, many with research or scientific potential, and in 2020, the William W. Pinch collection, a unique scientific and extraordinary collection, currently on loan to the MGMH.