David Vaughan

Qualifications

BSc Geology and Chemistry (London) 1967; MSc Geology (London) 1968; DPhil Mineralogy (Oxford) 1971

Research Group(s)

• Molecular Environmental Science

Research Institutes

• Dalton Nuclear Institute

David Vaughan is Emeritus Professor of Mineralogy and Emeritus (Founding) Director of the Williamson Research Centre for Molecular Environmental Science at the University of Manchester. Educated at the Universities of London and of Oxford, from which he holds the degree of DSc, he has worked at the Canada Centre for Minerals and Energy Technology, Ottawa (1970), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1971-74), and the University of Aston in Birmingham (1974-88). He has also been a Visiting Professor at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, University of Florence, and Liverpool University, and is an Honorary Professor at the Academia Sinica, Beijing, and Honorary Research Fellow at the Natural History Museum, London. David Vaughan is a Fellow of the Mineralogical Society of America, the Geological Society, the Society of Economic Geologists, and the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, and is Past-President of the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland, of the Mineralogical Society of America, former Vice-President of the Societe Francais de Mineralogie et Cristallographie and Past-President of the European Mineralogical Union. The sulfide mineral vaughanite, from Hemlo, Canada, was named for David Vaughan in recognition of his contributions to mineralogy.

 The research interests of David Vaughan centre on fundamental studies of minerals, particularly metal sulfides and oxides, using advanced analytical, spectroscopic and imaging techniques; molecular scale studies of mineral surfaces including interactions with microbial species, and applications of such studies to problems of Earth resources (including mineral extraction technologies) and the environment. He is author/co-author of over 300 publications in scientific journals and of textbooks including:

Resources of the Earth (with J. Craig and B. J. Skinner) Prentice-Hall, 472pp (4th ed, 2011)
Theoretical Geochemistry (with J. Tossell) Oxford University Press, 514pp (1992)
Mineral Surfaces (co-ed with R.A. D. Pattrick) Chapman and Hall, 370pp (1995)
Environmental Mineralogy (co-ed with R. A. Wogelius) European Mineralogical Union, 434pp (2000)
Sulfide Mineralogy and Geochemistry (Ed.) Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry, Geochemical Society and Mineralogical  Society of America, 714pp (2006)

In 2003-2004 he was Mineralogical Society of America Distinguished Lecturer. In 2005 he received the Royal Society of Chemistry Award in Geochemistry and, in 2006, the Schlumberger Medal of the Mineralogical Society (of Great Britain and Ireland). He is one of the few UK scientists elected (in 2007) a 'Geochemical Fellow' of the Geochemical Society and of the European Association of Geochemistry. In 2007-08 he was Mineralogical Society Distinguished Lecturer, in 2010-2012 Councillor of the Geological Society, and President of the Mineralogical Society of America in 2014. In 2016, he was elected a (Foreign) Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.