Japan Association of Mineralogical Sciences
http://jams.la.coocan.jp
JAPAN ASSOCIATION OF MINERALOGICAL SCIENCES
AWARDEES
The Japan Association of Mineralogical Sciences (JAMS) is proud
to announce the recipients of its 2018 society awards. The Japan
Association of Mineralogical Sciences Award is presented to amaximum of two scientists in any one year and is awarded for exceptional contributions to mineralogical and related sciences. The Manjiro
Watanabe Award—named in honor of Professor Manjiro Watanabe, afamous Japanese mineralogist, and founded at his bequest—is awarded
every year to one scientist who has significantly contributed to mineralogical and related sciences over his or her long career. The Sakurai
Medal—named in honor of Dr. Kin-ichi Sakurai, the discoverer ofmany new minerals—is awarded to a scientist who has made a lasting
contribution to the study of new minerals.

Japan Association of Mineralogical Sciences Award to
Susumu Umino
Susumu Umino is a professor at the Institute of Scienceand Engineering, Kanazawa University (Japan). He
specializes in igneous petrology and physical volcanology, especially magma genesis and mantle evolution through subduction initiation. Professor Umino
began his geological career by studying and experimenting on boninite from the type locality of theBonin Islands (central Pacific Ocean, south of Tokyo).
Susumu Umino
Based on the primitive melt inclusions in chromites
derived from boninite, Umino found the coexistence of high-silica
and low-silica boninite magmas, thereby providing constraints on thedevelopment of the mantle wedge during subduction initiation. Using
these results, combined with Nd–Hf–Os isotopic analyses, he articulated
the different origins of the boninite sources.
Professor Umino has also been engaged in a geological mapping project
organized by the Oman government. He has been working on the Oman
ophiolite and studying evidence for the different types of volcanic
processes exhibited by the paleo-ridge system and how that ridge transformed into an ephemeral arc. Umino showed how the Oman protoarc
magmas, including the boninites first reported by Tsuyoshi Ishikawa(in collaboration with Umino), both resembled and differed from theT–P–X evolution shown by the Izu–Bonin–Mariana protoarc magmas.
In addition to submersible dives to seamounts off Hawaii (USA) and theEast Pacific Rise, he joined Ocean Drilling Program (later becoming theIntegrated Ocean Drilling Program) expeditions to Hole 504B (200 km
south of the Costa Rica Rift) and Hole 1256D (equatorial East PacificRise), both of which drilled into intact oceanic crust.
Prof. Umino has been promoting a project MoHole, a plan to drill
through the entire oceanic crust to the Mohorovič ić Discontinuity
and into the mantle to recover pristine, in-situ, mantle materials forthe first time in human history.

Japan Association of Mineralogical Sciences Award toHiroshi Kojitani

Hiroshi Kojitani

Hiroshi Kojitani is a research associate in theDepartment of Chemistry at Gakushuin University(Japan). He has studied mantle minerals and theiranalog materials using the techniques of calorimetry,
spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and high-pressure–high-temperature experiments. He learned thermodynamic investigation methods of mantle minerals
under the supervision of Prof. Masaki Akaogi atE LEMENTS

Kanazawa University and Gakushuin University. Kojitani’s PhD thesis,
focused on the melting enthalpies of mantle rocks and basalts, has
subsequently been widely used in mantle dynamics simulations andfor constraining potential mantle temperatures. After a postdoc at Prof.
Alexandra Navrotsky’s laboratory (University of California at Davis,USA), he started a crystal structure refinement study using powder
X-ray diffraction to reveal the aluminum substitution mechanismwith oxygen vacancies in MgSiO3 bridgmanite. Similarly, he refined
the crystal structures of calcium ferrite–type MgAl2O4, NaMg2Al5SiO12
and KMg2Al5SiO12 hexagonal aluminous phases, and postperovskitetype CaRuO3, which is a quenchable analog of postperovskite-typeMgSiO3 that was first synthesized at high pressure and high temperature
by Kojitani and his group. He has also refined the enthalpy and heat
capacity data of MgSiO3 bridgmanite, MgSiO3 akimotoite, and Mg2 SiO4ringwoodite. Over the last decade, he had added the techniques of highpressure Raman spectroscopy and lattice vibrational model calculations
to his array of research methods for estimating the thermodynamic
parameters of high-pressure minerals (based on lattice vibrational data).
Using newly assessed thermodynamic datasets, he recently succeededin the thermodynamic calculation of the post-spinel phase boundaryin Mg2 SiO4.

Manjiro Watanabe Award to Yuzo Kato
Yuzo Kato, currently professor emeritus at theUniversity of Ryukyus (Japan), received his PhD in
1968 from Tohoku University (Japan). His doctoral
thesis, “Petrology of the Tertiary Granitic Rocks
around the Kofu Basin, Central Japan”, was supervised by Prof. Y. Ueda. After earning his PhD, hestayed at Tohoku University and continued working
on the granitic rocks in the Kitakami mountains of
Yuzo Kato
northeast Japan while also helping to characterize
the chemical compositions of reference rock standards that were being
distributed by the Geological Survey of Japan. From 1979 to 2004, heworked at the University of the Ryukyus (Japan). There, both he and hisstudents started a major geological, petrological, and geochronologicalinvestigation into the igneous rocks of the Ryukyu islands. In addition
to land-based sampling, Professor Kato also surveyed the submarine
volcanic activity around the Ryukyu arc: in the young back-arc basinof the Okinawa Trough he discovered a new type of pumice, which hetermed “woody pumice”. This type of pumice results from super-rapidcooling under high-pressure deep-sea conditions.
Professor Kato also performed a mineralogical study on the “tsunamiboulders” of the Ryukyu Islands and revealed reliable past inundation
heights and flow paths of paleo-tsunamis, which has helped in tsunami
hazard assessments. He also performed a pioneering work on accretionary lapilli. By a detailed study of the morphological and internal
structure of accretionary lapilli from diverse occurrence, he succeededcategorizing several types of accretionary lapilli based on their conditions of formation. And he has devoted much effort to spreading
geological and mineralogical knowledge to the general public. Books
by Prof. Kato include the Atlas of Rocks and Minerals of the Amami andOkinawa Islands (1985, in Japanese), which attracted public attention
by providing a unique display from outcrop through hand specimen
to photomicrograph for many typical rocks of the islands.
Professor Kato has greatly contributed petrological, mineralogical,volcanological, and mitigation studies of the Ryukyu island arc. He has
also enthusiastically educated the public and popularized the geologyof these fields. Since 2004, he has been an emeritus professor at theUniversity of Ryukyus.

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