Memorial to John Prior Hunt 1930–2017 LEWIS B. GUSTAFSON San Mateo, California, USA

The minerals exploration industry lost a great geologist and an inspirational leader with the passing of John Hunt in Salt Lake City on 22 February 2017. He was 86 years old. John is survived by his wife of 68 years, Alicia, by children Carrie, Richard, and Anna, and by six grandchildren. John was born 4 October 1930 in Los Angeles and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, the son of the highly respected mining geologist Richard N. Hunt. He earned a B.A. with distinction in geology at Cornell University and a Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley under Charles Meyer. After six months of active duty in the U.S. Army at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in 1957, John was sent by Anaconda with his new family to the porphyry copper mine being developed at El Salvador, Chile. Under Frank Trask, he became a practical and competent mine geologist. He led the formation of a first-class mineralogical laboratory, modeled after Chuck Meyer’s lab at Butte and located within the operating geological office at the mine. More than 80 man-years of geological work dissected the anatomy of the ore body and unraveled the evolution of the mineralizing system—more than ever done on any other porphyry copper system. This work was published with Lew Gustafson in 1975 in what became the most widely referenced work on such deposits. During this time, John was given his first exploration assignments in Chile and Peru. In 1969, John requested a transfer back to Salt Lake City, where he was put in charge of Anaconda’s exploration in the western United States. He was also charged with the design and installation of a state-of-the-art geological laboratory in Salt Lake. It was to be a real application of the research at Butte and El Salvador, employing some of the best existing staff and supplemented by the brightest new talent he could find at universities such as Berkeley and Harvard. Soon it was clear they were on the right track. John Proffett’s detailed mapping of the Yerington district, Nevada, and his reinterpretation of the structure and geologic history of the entire district led to the discovery of the hidden Ann Mason porphyry copper deposit beneath tilted and barren post-mineral volcanics. Combining the new talent of Marco Einaudi and Bill Atkinson, along with Jim Garmoe’s experience, resulted in a reinterpretation of structure and mineral zoning at Bingham, Utah. This led directly to the discovery of Anaconda’s deep Carr Fork skarn ore body. Julian Hemley was induced to leave the U.S. Geological Survey to set up and run the mining industry’s first experimental geochemistry program at the Salt Lake laboratory. Later in 1969, John was promoted to chief geologist of Anaconda in the head office in New York City, and commuted as he moved with the family to Summit, New Jersey. This involved work in eastern and western Canada, as well as more involvement with the Butte operations, and Cananea and Nacozari in Mexico. Vin Perry and Bill Swayne wanted John to integrate the new approaches and philosophies he had developed with the western United States team

Geological Society of America Memorials, v. 46, May 2017 13 14 THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA more broadly throughout the company. Progress was made, but being involved with the top management convinced John that doing geology was more fun. And then, in 1971, Anaconda suddenly lost two-thirds of its income and most of its profits as the new communist president of Chile, Salvador Allende, expropriated without compensation all copper mines in the country. Anaconda was reduced from the world’s largest copper producer to trying to survive. John was forced to cut half of his geologists and geophysicists, terminating research and much of the exploration. Chase Manhattan Bank installed one of its own as president. Many top personnel were fired, and John was given the option of becoming vice president and chief geologist of the new Primary Metals Division. Geologic and mining activities would be run out of Tucson, Arizona. John accepted the idea of trying to salvage as much of Anaconda’s geological tradition and personnel as possible. However, he concluded in 1973 that Anaconda, as he had known it and what it stood for, was gone forever. He resigned to look for a new career involving more technical and geologic work and less administration. John said he got tired of firing other people, so he fired himself! In 1974, John accepted an offer from Gustaf Arrennias as a non-salaried research associate at Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. Two years at Scripps was interesting, but when Superior Oil’s Howard Keck asked him to take a consulting job of managing their Quebrada Blanca project in northern Chile, he accepted. He hired Jim Bratt to set up a camp and starting a drilling program, which soon proved up an enriched copper ore body in a district which had analogies with Butte. John (with Jim Bratt) also recognized the great potential of the nearby Collahuasi district and obtained pertinencias (claims) there. Subsequently, John, with Carlos Munchmeyer, Hunter Ware, Juan Carlos Marquardt, Horacio Bruna, and others drilled and discovered what has become the rich Rosario mine at Collahuasi. The Ujina and Opache deposits were also discovered and the first holes drilled into them by this group. But his job there ended when Superior was sold by Keck to Mobil Oil which was not interested in mining in Chile. Returning to the United States, John, with the partnership (H.W. & P.) he had formed with Hunter Ware and John Proffett, undertook an exploration program for Howard Keck. Several targets (Horn Silver, Utah; Mayflower, Montana; Vulture, Arizona; Johnson River, Alaska; etc.) were tested but failed to make viable mines. In 1984, David Crombie of Rayrock Resources went with John for a trip in Chile. This ended in the formation of Minera Rayrock which kept John and to a lesser extent Hunt, Ware, and Proffett busy for the next 15 years. “Medium-sized” high-grade deposits, relatively close to existing infrastructure were the targets. The Ivan Project near Antofogasta produced the first mine. Working with a series of fine Chilean geologists (C. Munchmeyer, J.C. Marquardt, M. Vivanco, R. Fam, A. Souviron, H. Langerfeldt, and lawyer E. Perez-Cotapos), some superb exploration was done before Rayrock became, in 1999, the third of John’s companies to expire. John continued consulting for several years, including for Codelco, where he reestablished the Anaconda system at El Salvador, and at Chuqui he guided preparation of a new geologic model and exploration to the south for the offset portions of the ore body. H.W. & P. also did work for Doug Cook at Freeport in the western United States. Throughout this extremely successful career, he taught, led by example, and inspired countless colleagues. And he has done this with a level of energy, enthusiasm, sense of adventure, and boyish humor that often led his extraordinarily vivacious and artistic wife Alicia to refer to her “teenage husband.” Like the time he led unsuspecting visitors to their home in La Jolla to swim at what turned out to be a nudist beach, or about bungee jumping to keep up with his athletic 20-something son, or about the time we ended up in a Carabinero’s paddy wagon in Tal Tal being taken to a bordello for cumbia lessons with some of the local ladies. It is a very great pleasure for me to commemorate MEMORIAL TO JOHN PRIOR HUNT 15

John Hunt, a man I have been privileged to have as a colleague and close friend for more than 55 years, and to whom I owe so much, both professionally and personally.

A few of the awards John received were: the Haddon Forrester King Medal by Australian Academy of Sciences (2001); Honorary Fellow of Society of Economic Geologists (2014); Herbert Thomas Award of the Chilean Geological Society (2015); the Thayer Lindsley Distinguished Lecturer (1979–1980; “Geology of Porphyry Copper,” “Geology as Applied to Mining,” “Mineral Resources and Political Power”); and the Robert Dreyer Lecture (2002; “Exploration and Discovery at Quebrada Blanca and Collahuasi: 1975–1984”).

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF JOHN P. HUNT 1957 Rock Alteration Mica and Clay Minerals in Certain Areas in the United States and Lark Mines, Bingham, Utah [unpublished Ph.D. dissertation]: University of California at Berkeley. 1964 Primary sulfate and primary sulfide mineralization at the El Salvador Mine, Chile, in Roedder, E., ed., The Chemistry of the ore-forming fluids: 1965 Report in Society of Economic Geologist Symposium: Economic Geology, v 60, p. 1398. 1975 (with Gustafson, L.B.) The Porphyry Copper Deposit at El Salvador, Chile: Economic Geology, v. 70, no. 5, p. 857–912, doi:10.2113/gsecongeo.70.5.857. 1975 (editor and convener) Future Non-Fuel Mineral Supplies: Proceedings, Interdisciplinary Workshop, Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California, San Diego (unpublished). 1976 (with Pearce, J.A., et al.) Porphyry Copper Case Study: Science: A Third Level Course, Earth Science Topics and Methods: The Open University Press. 1977 Porphyry copper deposits [abs.], in Volcanic Processes in Ore Genesis: Proceedings, Joint Meeting of the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy and The Geological Society of London, p. 98. 1980 Porphyry copper deposits: Mineria de Cobres Porfidicos, Volumen I, Anales del Congresso Cincuentenario, Instituto de Ingenieros de Minas de Chile, p. 9–40. 1980 (with Munchmeyer, F.C., Marquardt, L.J.C., and Soto, H.P.) El Proyecto Quebrada Blanca: Mineria de Cobres Porfidicos, Volumen II, Anales del Congresso Cincuentenario, Instituto de Ingenieros de Minas de Chile, p. 263–289. 1983 (with Bratt, J.A., and Marquardt, L.J.C.) Quebrada Blanca, Chile: An Enriched Porphyry Copper Deposit: Mining Engineering, v. 35, no. 6. 1985 Applied Geology at Quebrada Blanca and Collahuassi, Chile, and in the Future of U.S. Metal Mining: Society of Economic Geologists Distinguished Lecture in Geology, Economic Geology, v. 80, no. 5, p. 794–800, doi:10.2113/gsecongeo.80.3.794. 1991 Porphyry Copper Deposits: Economic Geology Monograph No.8, p. 192–206. 1992 (with Hemley, J.J.) Hydrothermal Ore-Forming Processes in the light of Studies in Rock- Buffered Systems: II. Some General Geologic Applications: Economic Geology, v. 87, no. 5 p. 23–43, doi:10.2113/gsecongeo.87.1.23.

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