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Johann Von Lamont (1805-1879): a Pioneer in Geomagnetism

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Johann Von Lamont (1805-1879): a Pioneer in Geomagnetism Inside... Visiting Fellow Reports 2 Current Abstracts 4 new Visiting Fellows 7 IRM news 11 Winter 2004-5, Vol. 14, No. 4 Johann von Lamont (1805-1879): A pioneer in geomagnetism In 2005 we can commemorate the 200th Heinrich Soffel birthday of Johann von Lamont (Fig. 1), Prof. Emeritus a pioneer in geomagnetism in the middle University of of the 19th century. He belonged to the München group around Gauss, von Humboldt, Sabine, Angström and others (forming the Göttingen Magnetic Union) who established within a few years an international network of geomagnetic observatories around the word (Barraclough et al., 1992) upon which much of our present day knowledge about the geomagnetic field rests. Johann von Lamont was born as John Lamont on 15 December 1805 in Corriemulzie near Braemar in Central Fig. 1. Portrait of Johann von Lamont from 1856 showing him at the age of 50. of Johann von Lamont from Fig. 1. Portrait Scotland. His father, Robert Lamont, was a forester and administrator to James, the second Earl of Five. When Robert engineering which helped him later in the the Observatory in 1835 at the age of 29. Lamont died suddenly in 1816 from an construction and production of instru- More details about the Lamont family, accident with his horse the family had to ments for observatory and field work. the life and the scientific career of search for a sponsor who could take care Since 1827 he spent most of the time of Johann von Lamont can also be taken of the education of the bright 12 year old his vacations as a student in the Royal from Wienert (1966) and Beblo & Soffel boy John. In 1817, Father Gallus Astronomical Observatory which had (1991). Robertson, the dean of the Scottish been built in 1816-1817 in Bogenhausen, The early 1830’s were very Monastery St. James from Regensburg in at that time a small village close to important for geomagnetism due to the Bavaria visited Scotland in search of Munich. In 1828 he was appointed as an initiatives of Carl Friedrich Gauss and talented students for his monastery assistant in the observatory and in 1830 Alexander von Humboldt. During his school. John received a fellowship and he got a PhD at the University of expeditions, which led him to remote was taken to Regensburg for an educa- Munich. Due to the bad health of the parts of our globe, von Humboldt had tion in theology and sciences. However, director of the observatory, Georg von recognised that the origin of the spatial the main interests of the boy were not in Soldner, Lamont was soon in charge of and temporal variations of the geomag- theology but in mathematics and natural doing all the astronomical routine work. netic field could only be investigated by sciences. This was soon recognized by When von Soldner died in 1833 Lamont world-wide simultaneous and permanent Father Benedict Deasson, one of his was on his own and entirely responsible. observations in a global network of teachers, and John was trained in these He was finally appointed as director of Lamont disciplines including also mechanical 1 continued on p. 8... Visiting Fellows’ Reports decreased sharply in passing through the reduce or partially remove the internal Magnetic Memory in MD strains and stresses produced by crystal Morin transition (TM). At TM, 97% of the Hematite original SIRM is demagnetized with the defects. A large single crystal of Özden Özdemir disappearance of spin-canting and the hematite (6 mm) was heated in zero field University of Toronto In previous years at the IRM, I onset of c-axis antiferromagnetism. in air at 600°C for 3 and 5 hours. I used [email protected] a Schoenstedt thermal demagnetizer to studied low-temperature demagnetization Between TM and 20 K, there was no of TRM and SIRM of natural single further demagnetization. The residual 3% anneal the crystal in zero field. The crystals of hematite with grain sizes of the original remanence remained sequence of the annealing experiments between 1-6 mm. The zero-field cooling constant. In warming back though the was: (1) thermally demagnetize the and warming curves of SIRM for a 4 mm Morin transition, 43% of the original crystal at 705°C, anneal for 3 hours; (2) hematite crystal are shown in Figure 1. remanence was recovered. This value is produce 0.1 mT TRM and measure M ; (3) LTD by cooling the crystal to In cooling from 300 K, the remanence much higher than the SIRM memory TR ratios of 30-32% measured for SD 77 K in liquid N2 and measure the TRM hematites with grain sizes memory; (4) repeat (1) to (4) for 5-hour 1.0 between 0.12-0.23 µm. annealing experiments. The intensity of TRM decreased 7% At TM, as spins rotate from the (0001) plane to the c-axis, after 3-hours annealing. However, the 0.8 intensity of the TRM memory was α -Fe O the magnetocrystalline 23 anisotropy constant passes reduced much more. After 3-hours (300) Single crystal through zero and changes sign. annealing, the crystal had a 30% lower 0.6 In MD hematite, domain walls TRM memory. Five hours annealing HSIRM // (0001) blocked by magnetocrystalline had further effect on the memory: about controlled pinning become free 2/3 of the initial memory was retained. 0.4 to jump and lead to demagneti- It appears that annealing reduced the SIRM SIRM zation of a large fraction of the number of strain centers but did not M/M original SIRM. The remaining completely remove all of them. The 0.2 43% of the room-temperature memory must be due to strongly pinned SIRM was not destroyed by domain walls, probably pinned magneto- cycling through T . strictively by dislocations or other 0 M 0 50 100150 200 250 300 This year at the IRM, I crystal defects. investigated the effect of I would like to thank Mike, Peat, Temperature, T (K) annealing on the TRM Ramon and Thelma for their help and memory. Annealing could hospitality. Normalized zero-field cooling and warming curves of SIRM for a 4 mm single crystal of hematite. Field is applied along (0001). Guillaume Plenier However, complex fabrics (those that fraction of super paramagnetic (SP) grains. Cooling the sample below the IPGP and CNRS Origin of complex magnetic differ significantly from the normal case) SP-blocking temperature would lead to [email protected] appear to be more prevalent than is fabrics an increase in the fraction of single and generally accepted. Indeed, entire sites can yield a single well-defined complex domain grains that would, in turn, Jonathan Glen The aim of our visit was to determine fabric. As a result, independent flow change the sample’s AMS fabric U. S. Geological Survey what factors control complex fabrics in indicators (e.g., vesicle orientation or (driving it towards an inverse fabric) and [email protected] igneous rocks, and to assess whether petrofabric studies) are needed to allow one to infer the flow direction. magma flow directions could be confidently infer magma flow directions. To test this idea, we applied an recovered from them. Interestingly, some of the most existing high-field method (Ferré et al., commonly observed complex fabrics are 2000; Thill et al. 2000; Kelso et al. Introduction ones that mimic the normal case, in that 2002), for the first time, at low tempera- Until recently, studies of the the AMS axes are aligned with the flow tures. In addition we performed anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility coordinates but are flipped with respect to magnetic mineral identification, based (AMS) of dikes and lavas have largely each other (Figure 1). One of the most on low-temperature crystallographic assumed a simple relation between the compelling explanations for these transitions using an MPMS, and principal AMS directions and magma “permuted” fabrics involves mixtures of determination of magnetic grain size, flow. In the so-called “normal” magnetic single domain and multidomain grain with the use of hysteresis curves, FORC fabric case, the magnetic foliation sizes (Rochette et al., 1992; Ferré, 2002). distribution analyses, and low-tempera- mimics the flow plane (i.e., the AMS Assuming grain size mixtures are ture AC-susceptibility measurements, to minimum — Kmin, which is the normal responsible for these permuted fabrics, assess the actual factors responsible for to the foliation plane, lies perpendicular one might be able to recover the true flow the permuted fabrics. to a dike’s walls or to a lava’s bottom) direction by isolating the influence of the Two sets of samples yielding and the magnetic lineation (given by the different grain size fractions on the permuted fabrics were studied: mid- AMS maximum — Kmax) parallels the magnetic fabric. It might be particularly Miocene dikes from the Roberts magma flow direction. Mountains, NV (eastern Northern 2 appropriate for samples containing some Normal flow coordinates Kmax flow Kmin direction K1 K3 LTHFASR - small cube Kint K2 K1 Max Specimen 0110 N AMS paleomag specimen dike walls or flow top and bottom K2 Int (parallel to flow plane) K3 Min Normal Flat Normal Fin MD 300a K2-K3 flip 200 175 np + ip: Rochette et al. , 1992 100 300b 25 AMS 200 300a AMS 300b 175 Intermediate Flat Intermediate Fin K1-K2 flip 3-axis flip 100 25 100 200 25 Inverse Parallel Inverse Perpendicular 175 300a 300b 3-axis flip K1-K3 flip AMS Figure 2: Comparison of the LTHFASR measurements (in color) at different temperatures no + ip: Rochette et al. , 1992 (in °K) with the low-field room-temperature AMS (black) fabric for the specimen 0110 from the Black Butte locality (Oregon).
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