Frank Fitch Grout

Frank Fitch Grout (January 24, 1880, Rockford, Illinois – August 1, 1958, Minneapolis) was an American petrographer, geologist, and mineralogist. He is perhaps best known for introducing the term lopolith into the science of geology. The mineral groutite is named in Grout's honor (based upon a 1945 discovery by John Walter Gruner).

Biography Grout graduated from the high school course offered at Throop Polytechnic Institute and Manual Training School and then briefly studied at Throop College (precursor to Caltech), before transferring to the University of Minnesota. There he graduated with a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1904. He was employed in 1905 by the West Virginia Geological Survey and in 1906 by the Illinois Geological Survey. He was briefly employed as an instructor by the University of Oklahoma. At the University of Minnesota, he joined in 1907 the academic staff of the geology department and retained academic appointments there until his retirement. He was promoted to full professor in 1919 and retired in 1948 as professor emeritus. He received in 1908 a master's degree in geology from the University of Minnesota and in 1917 a Ph.D. in geology from Yale University. In December 1947 he gave an address to a conference sponsored by the Geological Society of America. Grout gained an outstanding reputation as a teacher. In retirement, he taught successively at several universities: Florida State}, Columbia, Arizona, and Caltech.

Grout was primarily a petrologist and petrographer, but he also did research on "clays, coal, iron formation and ores, mineralogy, chemical analysis of rocks and Precambrian stratigraphy." The Duluth Complex consists of two layers, a thicker lower layer essentially gabbro and an upper red layer that more closely resembles granite (called granophyre). There is no major transition in between, as would have been expected under Bowen's theory of differentiation/crystallization. Grout pointed out evidence of convection in the magma.