Howard T. Evans (1920-2000)

Howard Tasker Evans Jr., 80, a scientist emeritus with the US Geological Survey and past president of the American Crystallographic Association, died Jan. 20 at his home in Rockville after a heart attack. Dr. Evans, an authority on the application of crystal chemistry to mineral systems, was a research chemist with the Geological Survey from 1952 to 1994. Since then, he had done research as scientist emeritus and also had served as a research associate with the mineral sciences division of the Smithsonian Institution. He served as a principal investigator for lunar sulfide minerals brought back from the moon in 1969. Over the years, he determined the crystal structure of more than 100 complex minerals. Dr. Evans was a 1985 recipient of an Interior Department Meritorious Service Award and had served as a fellow, councilor and associate editor with the Mineralogical Society of America. He also helped organize and lead the Washington Crystal Colloquium. He served as a special advisor to the International Atomic Energy Commission for an X-ray diffraction laboratory. He was the author of more than 150 technical publications and took part in early research that resulted in a Nobel Prize in chemistry for Jerome Karle and Herbert Hauptman in 1985. Dr. Evans was born in the Panama Canal Zone and raised in Wellesley, Mass. He was a 1942 chemistry graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he also received a doctorate in inorganic chemistry. Before coming to Washington and joining the government, he taught and performed research at MIT and was a research physicist with Phillips Laboratories in Westchester, NY.