Hugh P. Taylor Jr.

Hugh Pettingill Taylor Jr. (December 27, 1932, Holbrook, Arizona – October 26, 2021) was an American geochemist.

Biography Hugh P. Taylor Jr. and his (non-identical) twin brother lived in Arizona and New Mexico until 1943 when they moved with their parents to Los Angeles County, California. The family struggled financially. He and his brother attended South Gate High School. Their parents divorced in 1944. In 1949 Hugh P. Taylor Jr. scored the highest on a state-wide chemistry exam and won a scholarship from the American Chemical Society, enabling him to attend California Institute of Technology (Caltech). There he played varsity football, under head coach Bert LaBrucherie, and was inspired to study geology by a course taught by Professor Robert P. Sharp with the teaching assistants Clarence Allen and Leon Silver. Taylor graduated in 1954 with a B.S. in geochemistry. He was one of the first two graduating geochemistry majors in Caltech's history. From 1954 to 1955 Taylor was a graduate student at Harvard University, where he graduated with an M.S. in geology. In 1955 he returned to Caltech as a graduate student in geochemistry. He spent the summers of 1955 and 1956 working for the U.S. Steel Corporation to explore for iron ores in southeastern Alaska. was supervised by Samuel Epstein. In the 1970s Epstein and Taylor analyzed isotopic compositions of samples of lunar rocks and minerals, returned from 6 Apollo missions — Apollo 11, 12, & 14 to 17. Epstein and Taylor also analyzed samples returned by Soviet Union's Luna 20 mission.

Taylor was the author or co-author of more than 150 scientific articles. He did research with Bruno Turi on igneous rocks in Italy. Taylor and his colleagues did research on the interactions of the oceans with the underlying igneous crust, the hydrothermal circulation cells that form around intrusive igneous rocks, the geochemical origins of ore deposits and oxygen isotope analyses of minerals in stony meteorites.

In 1981 Taylor was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences and also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was awarded in 1993 the Arthur L. Day Medal and in 1995 the Urey Medal. He delivered the 30th William Smith Lecture to the Geological Society of London.

Selected publications