Donald Lough Everhart, 1939
B.A., Denison University
M.A., Harvard University
Ph.D., Harvard University
Arlington Heights, Ill.
Citation awarded on Saturday, June 8, 1974
Over a period of more than three decades, Donald Lough Everhart’s professional career has been directed to the search for and development of mineral resources that have been critically required in the United States.
Mr. Everhart joined the war-time strategic minerals program of the United States Geological Survey in 1942. For the next 6½ years, as a Survey geologist, he contributed to the search for and evaluation of new domestic ore reserves of metals essential to the World War II effort.
In 1949, Mr. Everhart became one of the first geologist employed by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) at a time when only a few tons of uranium ore reserves were known to exist in the U.S. He assumed leadership in building up a world-wide program of geologic exploration efforts to provide the nation with adequate reserves of this new and critical source of energy. During his 11-year stay with AEC, he helped establish the principles of the origin of uranium deposits and their geologic controls, this being a new geoscience. His work took him to nearly every country of the then “Free World”.
In 1959, he joined International Minerals and Chemical Corporation (IMC) as their chief geologist and now division vice president of geology and exploration. Here he has organized and administered world-wide programs to assure adequate ore reserves supplies for IMC’s businesses which produce chemical fertilizers in the battle against world hunger and participates in the international steel, foundry, ceramic, and chemical industries.
Author of numerous technical papers in professional journals on economic geology, he has also been a teaching fellow on mineralogy at Harvard from 1940 to 1942; a member of the board of directors of Azufrera Intercontinental, S.A., Mexico, since 1967; member, board of directors of SCAN Exploration Ltd., Canada, since 1969; vice president of IMC Development Corp., Australia, since 1966; and a member of the U.S. Department of the Interior Executive Reserve since 1971. He has also been a member of the Council of the Society of Economic Geologists since 1968, a member of the board of directors of the Economic Geology Publishing Co. since 1969. He was the Thayer Lindslay Distinguished Lecturer in economic geology on six university campuses this spring.
A partial list of earlier activities include acting as an official U.S. delegate to the Conference on Minerals Exploration in the ECAFE countries of the Economic Council for Asia and the Far East of the UN., in Bangkok, Thailand, 1963; official U.S. delegate of the Second Conference on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy of the UN., Geneva, Switzerland, 1958; and official U.S. delegate to the international geological congress in Mexico City, 1956.
