In Memoriam

John M. Hunt
1918 - 2005

Eminent organic geochemist John M. Hunt died on July 23, 2005, in Falmouth, Massachusetts. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution web site provides a thorough obituary. The book Organic Matter: Productivity, Accumulation, and Preservation in Recent And Ancient Sediments, edited by Whelan and Farrington (Columbia University Press, 1992), includes a chapter by Wallace Dow on Reflections on the Career and Times of John M. Hunt.

The first half of his career was in the oil industry, where he performed groundbreaking research and pioneered the use of new techniques and analytical instruments. In 1964 he moved to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution where he served as a department chair and linked chemists with geologists; he retired in 1984. He was an expert on the origin and migration of petroleum and was the author of Petroleum Geochemistry and Geology (W.H.Freeman & Co Ltd., 1979). He collaborated with TSOP members and was a supporter of organic petrology.