Sixth V.M. Goldschmidt Conference

Heidelberg, March/April 1996

Conference Abstracts.

The Preface to the volume is reproduced below, together with information on the Organizing Committee and sponsors . Abstracts are in alphabetical order of the surname of the first author. The suffix of their web address is XXX.html, where XXX is the page number within the volume. The page numbers of abstracts by any author can be found from the Index of Authors. Abstracts on any given topic may be found from the Lists of Symposia . Alternatively, abstracts can be found from the search facilities provided by Digital's Altavista service.

Preface

Goldschmidt Conferences were initiated in the United States by the Geochemical Society in 1988 and were initially held biennially close to the Spring meeting of the American Geophysical Union near Baltimore or Washington. In the same year, the European Association of Geochemistry (EAG) held an International Congress of Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry in Paris. Efforts to coordinate the scientific meetings of European and North American geochemists started well before that time, but it took until 1994 for the geochemical meetings on both sides of the Atlantic to find their rhythm. The two societies agreed to join their efforts and alternate Goldschmidt Conference locations between North America and Europe. The first European Goldschmidt Conference was thus held in Edinburgh in 1994. At the same time the frequency was doubled to an annual schedule, in effect adding a European Goldschmidt Conference in even years, while the American conferences are held in odd years. Future Conferences will be held in Tucson, Arizona (1997) and in Toulouse, France (1998).

The Heidelberg Goldschmidt Conference will be attended by over 700 scientists and will thus be the largest so far. Participants originate predominantly from European countries, but include about 80 scientists from North America. We hope that the success of this meeting will contribute to an ever closer cooperation between the two societies and to the growth of a truly international geochemical community. To emphasize this cooperation, these societies will present up to 15 joint Geochemistry Fellows at this and future Goldschmidt Conferences, and the Geochemical Society will for the first time present its V.M. Goldschmidt and F.W. Clarke Awards in Europe at the Heidelberg Conference.

The symposia and topical sessions of the Conference cover an extremely broad spectrum of geochemical fields of research. They range from cosmochemistry to the structure and reactivity of mineral surfaces. Plenary lectures will cover the subjects of the large scale chemical structure and dynamics of the Earth's mantle, the formation and extraction of melts in the mantle, and the causes of the fluctuation of CO₂ in the Earth's atmosphere during glacial and interglacial times. A special plenary lecture will be given about the scientist who started it all: Victor Moritz Goldschmidt. The extremely wide scientific scope is cause of both strengths and weaknesses of geochemistry. The discipline touches on literally all aspects of modern Earth sciences and has been responsible for many of the fundamental advances in understanding the Earth. Yet it still lacks recognition as a scientific discipline in its own right, and it is often taken to be little more than a servant to the classical disciplines of Earth science. The growth and flowering of Goldschmidt Conferences should help to change this perspective.