Report

Report The International Petrology

Committee

Each year, the International Committee for Coal and Organic Petrology (ICCP) may award its Reinhardt Thiessen Medal

Reinhardt

Thiessen

Medal

Ltd.

to one outstanding petrologist who has made significant contributions in the field. At the 1992 meeting, held at

Award,

Alexander Rankin Cameron was born in 1927 in Toronto, Ontario. He graduated with a BSc in geology from the St Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia in 1952. He obtained his MS in 1954 and PhD in 1961, both from The Pennsylvania State University where he studied under the guidance of Prof. Wm Spackman. The title of Dr Cameron’s dissertation was ‘Some Petrological Aspects of the Harbour Seam, Sydney Coalfield, Nova Scotia’. In 1952, in Sydney, he became an assistant to Dr Peter Hacquebard who initiated his career in coal geology and petrology at the Geological Survey of Canada. In 1976 Dr Cameron became Head of the Coal Technology Section and later of the Coal Geology Subdivision of the Survey’s Institute of Sedimentary and Petroleum Geology in Calgary, Alberta. During short interruptions he acted as Visiting Scientist at Penn State University (1967-1968), as Scientist and Lecturer at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale (19751976) and as Visiting Scientist at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK (1986). Dr Cameron has been a member of the ICCP since 1972 and was chairman of the organizing committee for its 1984 meeting in Calgary. He has also served as Chairman of the Coal Division of the Geological Society of America and of the

0016-2361/93/09/125941 ci;: 1993 Butterworth-Heinemann

for Coal and Organic

University Park, Pennsylvania, the recipient of the award was Dr A. R. Cameron.

1992 petrology of Canadian coals. The subject matter covers coal facies studies in relation to depositional environment; detailed petrographic studies in terms of the distribution of lithotypes, microlithotypes and macerals of coal seams; rank variation using vitrinite reflectance; the petrology of lignite deposits; evaluation of the coking properties of coals from their petrographic composition; uranium in coals in relation to their petrographic composition; economic coal resource evaluation; the discovery and petrography of thick anthracites in northern Yukon Territory; and a general outline of Canada’s coal deposits. Dr Cameron is a co-author of the well known book Coal Petrology: Its Principles, Methods and Applications, first published in 1983

DR A. R. CAMERON

Canadian Coal Petrographers Group. Dr Cameron has had a profound influence on the development of coal petrology in Canada through his publications and his involvement with beginners in organic petrology. He has written 51 scientific articles of which more than 80 per cent deal with the geology and

and now in its third printing. Dr Cameron’s entire professional life has been devoted to the development of coal science, especially the field of coal petrology. As a scientist and as a man of exceptional human qualities, he is highly esteemed by his colleagues. At the end of his formal professional career, the International Committee for Coal and Organic Petrology is pleased to honour Dr Alex Cameron with the Reinhardt Thiessen Medal ‘for his prominent and valuable work on the composition, genesis and utilization of coals, especially of Canadian coal deposits’.

Fuel 1993

Volume

72 Number

9

1259