JOHN B. REID, JR: IN MEMORANDUM

John B. Reid, Jr. obtained his Ph.D. in 1972 at MIT. He taught at Hampshire College from until 2003, where he was a one-man Geology department within the 5-Colleges consortium in the Amherst, Massachusetts, area. Over his three decades at Hampshire, John developed a remarkable following at numerous institutions. He was an excellent field geologist and made contributions in igneous petrology, fluvial geomorphology, and geochemical archaeology, to name a few. For example, his insightful analyses of schleiren in Sierran granites and the "skating rocks" of Death Valley are exemplars of how field oriented investigations should be conducted. John also exemplified the effectiveness of experiential learning. In his introductory classes, he exploited his vast collection of superb slides to make each class session a virtual field trip with observations, multiple working hypotheses, hypothesis testing, and experimentation. In the field, John’s keen observational skills and strong intuitive sense of physics, youthful enthusiasm, and tireless work ethic were an inspiration to numerous students and colleagues. Yet he also knew when to sit back and play music. As the chair of hundreds of first-year "Division One" research projects and dozens of senior thesis projects (many of them published) at Hampshire College, John launched many successful careers both in academic and applied science. Above all, John demonstrated that it is possible to begin doing first-rate, original hypothesis-based science at the beginning undergraduate level (or earlier), and have fun while doing it.