Robert Housley

Dr. Housley was born having a fascination with nature.  Before he was 10 years old he had his own museum in an unused out building on the Southern Oregon family farm.  He raised plants from seed.  He saw butterflies hatch from chrysalises and wasps hatch from mud dauber nests.  He had fossils from a shale bank on the farm and quartz and calcite crystals from a nearby abandoned quarry.  He read books on mineralogy and geology that his mother obtained from the State Library.  After moving to town, while in high school he decided that physics was fundamental to understanding nature.  He went on to obtain a B. A. from Reed College, and a Ph. D. in physics from the University of Washington in Seattle.  After a brief post-doctoral at University of Groningen, Netherlands he settled for the remainder of his working life in the Central Research Laboratory of an aerospace company located in Thousand Oaks CA  where he worked on a number of problems involving ferromagnetic materials, stealth technology, high temperature superconductors, nuclear waste isolation, and ultra-high temperature ceramic materials.  The highlight of his working career was 15 years spent studying lunar samples.  He retired in 1999, but continued to consult for the company until 2015 mainly on the characterization of materials primarily using scanning electron microscopy.  Before retirement he spent a 2 year sabbatical as a visiting professor of physics at Caltech.  After retirement he briefly continued as a Visiting Associate in physics at Caltech, but soon his interest in minerals led him to switch to the Geology and Planetary Sciences department where he now focuses on mineral spectroscopy and the finding, identification, and characterization of new minerals.  This interest has naturally led to an active association with the museum.  Dr. Housley continues to be an active field collector, not with an interest in building up a personal collection, but with a fascination with finding and characterizing unusual natural occurrences.  He has personally found several new minerals and has participated in the discovery and characterization of more than [email protected]