Abstract
It is a great pleasure and privilege to introduce Dr. Brian Mason as the recipient of the Roebling Medal of the Mineralogical Society of America. I first met Brian when he taught the first-year course in mineralogy at what was then Canterbury University College of the University of New Zealand. Brian was a graduate of that department, and we shared a common mentor, Robin S. Allan, after whom the Allan Hills are named. He was an expert in Tertiary brachiopods, and I don’t think that he ever mentioned the words “geochemistry” or “meteorite” in his lectures. Nevertheless, both Brian and I were stimulated by the teaching of that remarkable man, a friend of the philosopher Karl Popper, who was on campus at that time, a refugee from Hitler’s Germany.
