Orville Frank Tuttle (June 25, 1916,

Olean, New York Olean ( ) is a city in Cattaraugus County, New York, United States. Olean is the largest city in Cattaraugus County and serves as its financial, business, transportation and entertainment center. It is one of the principal cities of the Souther ...

– December 13, 1983,

Tucson, Arizona , "(at the) base of the black

ill ILL may refer to: * ''I Love Lucy'', a landmark American television sitcom * Illorsuit Heliport (location identifier: ILL), a heliport in Illorsuit, Greenland * Institut Laue–Langevin, an internationally financed scientific facility * Interlibrar ...

, nicknames = "The Old Pueblo", "Optics Valley", "America's biggest small town" , image_map = , mapsize = 260px , map_caption = Interactive ...

) was an American mineralogist, geochemist, and petrologist, known for his research on

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies und ...

s and

feldspar Feldspars are a group of rock-forming aluminium tectosilicate minerals, also containing other cations such as sodium, calcium, potassium, or barium. The most common members of the feldspar group are the ''plagioclase'' (sodium-calcium) feld ...

s, with pioneering development of apparatus in experimental petrography. After completing high school in

Smethport, Pennsylvania Smethport is a borough and county seat of McKean County, Pennsylvania, United States. The mayor is Wayne V. Foltz. The population was 1,430 at the 2020 census. Smethport is part of the ''Bradford, PA Micropolitan Statistical Area''. Smethport, ha ...

, he worked in the Bradford oilfields and studied geology at

Pennsylvania State College The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvan ...

(renamed in 1953

Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a public state-related land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvania. Founded in 1855 as the Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania, Penn State becam ...

), where he received a bachelor's degree in 1939 and a master's degree in 1940. He then matriculated at

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern t ...

for his doctoral work, which was interrupted by the Second World War, in which he was engaged in wartime research on crystal growth and characterization. In 1948 he received his doctorate at MIT. In 1947, he started his collaboration in experimental petrography with Norman L. Bowen at the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution in Washington. There he invented the "Tuttle Press" and the "Tuttle Bomb" (a high-pressure chamber), which were widely used in experimental petrography. Together with Bowen he explored in particular the formation of granite. In 1953 he became professor of geochemistry at Pennsylvania State University. In 1959 he became dean of the college of mineral industries. In 1960, he was diagnosed with

Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms becom ...

in the early stages. In 1965, he moved to Stanford University, where he was granted sick leave in 1967 and formally resigned in 1971. He moved to Tucson with his wife. In 1977 he received a tentative diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease and moved to a nursing home. He was awarded in 1952 the Mineralogical Society of America Award, in 1975 the

Roebling Medal The Roebling Medal is the highest award of the Mineralogical Society of America for scientific eminence as represented primarily by scientific publication of outstanding original research in mineralogy. The award is named for Colonel Washington A. ...

, and in 1967 the

Arthur L. Day Medal The Arthur L. Day Medal is a prize awarded by the Geological Society of America, established in 1948 by Arthur Louis Day Arthur Louis Day (October 30, 1869 – March 2, 1960) was an American geophysicist and volcanologist. He studied hi ...

. He was elected a foreign member of the

Geological Society of London The Geological Society of London, known commonly as the Geological Society, is a learned society based in the United Kingdom. It is the oldest national geological society in the world and the largest in Europe with more than 12,000 Fellows. Fe ...

and in 1968 a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nat ...

. He married Dawn Hardes in 1941 and the couple had two daughters.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tuttle, Orville Frank American mineralogists American geochemists Penn State College of Earth and Mineral Sciences alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Pennsylvania State University faculty Stanford University faculty Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences People from Olean, New York People from Smethport, Pennsylvania 1916 births 1983 deaths 20th-century American chemists