James B. Macelwane Award: Citation and Acceptance of Lawrence Grossman

Abstract

It is a pleasure to present Lawrence Grossman for the Macelwane Award. This occasion is particularly auspicious since the AGU meeting is held here in Toronto, Canada, where Larry was born and raised. As a young man he worked in a mining company plant in northern Manitoba, fixing railroad ties and then doing copper analyses of drill cores in their assay office. On careful investigation I found that he also had some criminal connections with the nearby offices of the Ontario Provincial Police, which was located a short distance from here along the waterfront. Fortunately, this turned out to be on the legal side and not the seamy side. It appears that Larry had directed his natural investigative skills toward doing mineral and chemical analyses of soils scraped from the shoes of suspected criminals. Larry Grossman has not changed directions—just subjects. His investigative skills are now directed toward rocks and soils scraped from the sole of the early solar system. The solar nebula is a place for which scientific proofs are often circumstantial, there being few witnesses to the crimes of creation.