One of Canada’s foremost applied exploration geochemists, Stanley Hoffman, has died in Vancouver from chronic diabetes. He was 47.
A native of Montreal, Hoffman graduated in geology from McGill University in 1969 and completed his masters (1972) and his doctorate (1976) in exploration geochemistry at the University of British Columbia (UBC). From 1973 to 1987, he was chief geochemist for BP Minerals and later formed the consulting firm Prime Geochemical Methods. He was one of the strongest advocates of the science. At a time when every geologist considered himself a geochemist and “dirt bagging” was the lowest function in exploration, he insisted on quality sampling in response to improvements in analytical technology.
Hoffman taught courses in applied geochemistry at UBC and influenced hundreds of prospectors at courses held by the British Columbia Department of Mines and the B.C. and Yukon Chamber of Mines. He made many contributions to sampling methods, analytical techniques, data-handling and interpretation of surveys. He regularly wrote for scientific journals, including his well known “Pearl Harbour” reports on exploration geochemistry failures in the Explore newsletter.
Hoffman was active in numerous associations and, from 1980 to 1992, was a member of the Council for the Association of Exploration Geochemists. He was president of the association from 1987 to 1988.
Very much aggrieved to learn so late that Stan Hoffman passed away in 1994.
I was Stan’s student assistant at UBC in 1970 – 1971. We did stream sediment sampling on some rivers north of Kamloops, under the supervision of Prof Keith Fletcher.
All this came flooding back when I was reading one of the online UBC Alumni magazines (12/10/2015) during a threatening thunderstorm in Lilongwe, Malawi, Africa. Someone was inviting readers to contribute a story to the magazine about their life at UBC. Oh! what can I contribute – then Stan’s name came; I googled it; then this Northern Miner’s obituary. Very sad indeed.
I have kept my interest in geochemistry. I supervised a regional geochemical survey of the Kalahari Desert sands over 32000km2 in western Botswana from 1996 – 2000. An abstract of our findings are published in The Journal of African Geology
Cheers