Renowned Dayton scientist passes

Dayton residents are still mourning the death of resident scientist, photographer and retired University of Montana professor Alex Volborth, who died in his home Oct. 30.

Authorities believe Volborth died of coronary failure sometime after 5 p.m., when he last held a phone conversation with his daughter. Neighbors were asked to investigate when he failed to respond to any attempts to contact him, only to discover that he had died in his bed.

Among the community of geologists, mineralogists and geochemists the world over, Volborth spent a lifetime making a name for himself.

He had more than 80 publications and reviewed scientific papers to his credit, with his work in the United States supported by the National Science Foundation. Additionally, he served as Killam Professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, where his work was supported by The National Research Council of Canada.

Many of his discoveries and mineral collections have been displayed at the Smithsonian Institute, at Harvard University and in the New York Museum of Natural History, as well as in a mineralogical museum at VSEGEI in St. Petersburg, Russia.

His love of the sciences as well as the arts were cultivated by his father, Alexis von Volborth, who was an organic chemist.

During the Winter War of 1939, when Russia invaded Finland, the younger Volborth was forced to flee the Karelian peninsula — a mere 25 miles from Leningrad — with his parents. The Volborth family settled in Helsinki, Finland, following the war.

Volborth joined the Finnish military at 18 and served in special units and as an interpreter during the last two years of World War II. Afterward, Volborth was able to return to his studies and earned degrees in mineralogy, geology, chemistry and geography from the University of Helsinki.

For his doctoral dissertation at the university, Volborth discovered a new mineral, a phosphate of beryllium and manganese, which was later named Vayrynenite in honor of one of his professors at the unversity.

His early work earned him a grant by the Outokumpu Foundation of Finland to study abroad, allowing him to pursue postdoctoral work at universities in Vienna, Austria, and Heidelberg, Germany. The results of his doctoral thesis were presented to the International Mineral Processing Congress in Paris, in 1955. He was invited to visit the New York University and then the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, where he continued his research.

Volborth was offered a position at the Mackay School of Mines, University of Nevada, Reno — the first of several professorships at universities in the United States and one in Canada. While in Nevada, he discovered an unusual fossil which was later described by Professor Joseph Lintz and named Elkoceras Volborthie in Volborth's honor.

These complexes contained rare granite types, which he was familiar with from his fieldwork in Finland. The project resulted in several publications and presentations to other scientists, ultimately earning him a Guggenheim Fellowship to study similar rocks in Egypt and Australia.

From 1956 to 1968, Volborth ran the Nevada Mining Analytical Laboratory. There, he was in charge of mineral and rock identification and training new staff. Most significantly, he expanded the laboratory into a recognized institution with a fast neutron accelerator, modern X-ray and ore analysis equipment.

Volborth pioneered the use of fast-neutron accelerators for the determination of oxygen in rocks and minerals. His work led to a grant enabling him to further develop the method at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory at Oak Ridge, Tenn. Upon publishing his work on the subject, he received a grant to build a new type of fast-neutron activation laboratory at the University of Nevada in Reno. Volborth also helped to build similar facilities at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, at the Reactor Facility for the Chemistry Department of the University of California in Irvine, at Washington State University in Pullman and for the Montana Tech Chemistry Department in Butte.

After a series of professorships, in 1979, Volborth's work brought him to Montana, where he served as professor of geochemistry and professor of geological engineering at Montana Tech.

In his second year, he was responsible for the original discovery of a previously unknown rhenium mineral in samples taken from the Stillwater complex near Nye. As the first to discover the mineral, Volborth received a grant from the National Science Foundation to study is properties as principal investigator in the 1980s.

Volborth maintained a professorship at Montana Tech and at the Montana College of Mineral Science and Technology until 1994.

In the later years of his life, Volborth developed what some hailed as a new art form, photographing geologic formations that resembled art and presenting them in large giclee prints at prestigious shows in the United States and Russia.

Volborth often noted that in America success is not in the people you know but in your ability to excel at what you do.

"Nobody asks you who you are," he said, "as long as you have the competence to succeed."

Volborth's daughter, Maria, will continue her father's plans to exhibit his photographs at Aqua Art, part of the world renowned Art Basel in Miami Beach, Fla., Dec. 3 through 5. Family members say a memorial will be held in Nelson, Nev., where he wished to be buried, sometime next year, possibly in February.