5 Meet Geoscientists:
Meet Jordan Makower, geologist and earth science teacher. His story is very inspirational, but also funny and exciting. It shows that with clear ideas and knowledge you can reach up to the sky! How many scientists got confirmed their ideas by huge corporations such as DeBeers (diamond business)? Read the story below.
One Fateful Step, After Another by Jordan Makower
“In 1958, I was floundering. I was a Junior, searching for a college subject to ‘Major’ in, and had enrolled in Hunter College’s Physical Geology, at their Bronx Campus. On the first class in a chilly September, in the noisy classroom on the third floor of Gillet Hall, I was surrounded by about 30 students. Everyone quieted down when the large man walked through the door. This was Dr. H. D. Thompson, unknown to all of us at the time, he had been the Geology Department Chairman, and a prize-winning Geomorphologist. “Doc” was about 6’ 3” tall, almost bald, robust, and muscular but slightly overweight. He addressed the class with a deep bass Virginia drawl. All he said was “Good Morning”, but I felt I should write that down. Unlike other professors I had, he was dressed in a red plaid flannel shirt, and didn’t ever refer to notes as he taught. It all seemed impromptu, but every lecture was filled with innumerable facts and subtle humor. The class relaxed, perhaps too much so, and a few people in the back row threw back a couple of wisecracks, which he ignored but upset me. I was here to learn. After the class I went up to him and spoke about that. “Would you want me to be a policeman?”, he said. “No, but if you’d just say one word to the class, they will stop”, I replied. The next day he did, the class became respectful, and afterwards we became good friends.
One day, he was discussing glaciers, and casually mentioned that, in 1926, the New York Times published an article about diamonds being brought down from the North by glaciers; the source hadn’t been found, “even today!” Other excerpts from his lectures stuck with me, but this one played over and over in my mind. One step!
Ten years later, I was again struggling, trying to support my family of four on my teacher’s salary. I was working in Westport, Connecticut. From morning until late afternoon, I was teaching at Bedford Junior High School. Early evenings, I was an Assistant Professor at Western Connecticut Teacher’s College (now a university), and during the summer I taught at Willimantic State College (now Eastern Connecticut State University). I needed more money. ‘The source of the diamonds hasn’t been found yet’ came drifting back to me. On a warm weekend I drove to the New York City Public Library at 476 5th Avenue, and went into the reference section, to study books on the last (Wisconsin Episode) glaciation.
I studied records of glacial striae, scratches left in the bedrock as that glacier dragged debris over it. I had made a primitive base map and recorded my findings. By triangulating the marks and extending them northward, they ‘came together’ roughly around Kapuskasing, Northern Ontario. On returning home, I wrote to the Canadian Bureau of Mines, requesting publications of geologic maps, geomagnetic surveys, and anything pertaining to the area. I also requested and paid for, a mining permit. The province would get a large portion of whatever I would find, and there were certain procedures necessary in maintaining a claim. Months went by without a reply. Summer vacation was approaching, and I hadn’t received anything! While waiting, I approached the Chairman of the Science Department, Don DiGennaro, who seemed interested enough in my project to promise to explore the area with me, but he knew nothing about prospecting or even navigating in the wilderness!
The delay in receiving my requested geologic information was due to one of the Canadian Postal Employees Association strikes in 1968! So it was, in late August, that we drove to Ontario to pick up my books, pamphlets, and maps, and sped onward toward our destination without having the opportunity to even open them. We stopped near Timmins, Ontario, to see the McIntyre Gold Mine, and were welcomed with open arms by the sole geologist, who wanted to show us the mine. He gave us drill cores and samples of ore from the mine, showed us maps and diagrams of their tunneling operations;’ he was glad to have someone to share his technology with, but we pressed onward.
It was really cold and windy in this part of the world at this time. We pitched our tents and built a small campfire to keep warm. No one else was camping then. To punctuate the isolation, we felt in this wilderness, when we went to the bathroom building (which didn’t have doors), a bear ambled out of the well-lit structure! After an uneasy night there, we continued toward Kapuskasing, finally picking out an area about 100 miles away from the town. We actually went into the town for supplies, and must have stood out, as people stopped to ask us what we were prospecting for. Daytime was so warm there that we had to take off our jackets to be comfortable while shopping. Back to the campsite, I finally got to open the printed material from the Ontario Geologic Survey and discovered that the De Beers Diamond Consortium had three competing groups, also searching for the gems, about 10 miles from our spot, AND THEY HADN’T FOUND THE SOURCE YET! Another step!
We hadn’t brought any prospecting equipment with us. My plan had been to walk along a riverbed and look for outcrops, collect sand samples from the stream and analyze what I found for mineral associates of diamond. I had brought some corundum with me for testing. The stream bottom was so clogged with layers of wood pulp from the logging industries that I couldn’t pick up any rocks or even sand! As we walked, we sank into the stream bank up to our calves, and we stuck! We could see a distant moose on a distant hill, but there wasn’t another living thing around… for miles! Even if we had brought an inflatable boat, it would have been useless to us. After a few minutes, we pulled ourselves loose from the muck, got into our car and headed back home.
We had traveled over 1000 miles in a week just to get there and were happy to be able to get out alive. This final step was the most important one.
In 2008, I saw a ‘television special’ about De Beers finding and opening the Victor Mine, in the James Bay Lowlands, about 160 miles North of Kapuskasing. The mine closed in 2019 after producing 7,000,000 carats of diamonds. I’m glad to be alive to read about that! This final step is the best one.”
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