Who is The Gem Dugout

We sadly must report that Deane Smith died on September 7, 2001 after a long battle with cancer. However, Dr. Smith's lifetime acheivements live on in 150 published articles and several books. Deane K. Smith, was the owner and operator of The Gem Dugout, Emeritus Professor of Mineralogy at The Pennsylvania State University. He joined the faculty of the Department of Geosciences in 1968 after four years with the Portland Cement Association Fellowship at the National Bureau of Standards (now the National Institutes of Science and Technology) and eight years at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He was the author of more than 150 technical papers in mineralogy, crystallography, ceramics, and materials science with a speciality in applications of X-ray diffraction analysis. During his teaching career in mineralogy, he taught gem cutting along with many other courses. It is the combination of the gem cutting experience and the experimental X-ray diffraction that led to the success of The Gem Dugout as the principal products are gem-like plates of quartz that are used in the experimental acquisition of the data.

Deane K. Smith was the founding editor of Powder Diffraction, a journal devoted to the characterization of crystalline materials by the powder diffraction method. He was also co-editor of two recent important books in the field of experimental powder diffraction: Practical Guide to the Preparation of Specimens for X-ray Fluorescence and X-ray Diffraction Analysis. by Victor E. Buhrke, Ron Jenkins, and Deane K. Smith, and Industrial Applications of X-ray Diffraction by Frank H. Chung and Deane K. Smith