John Dickey Jr., scientist, author, and poet, died Oct. 8, 2019, of cancer at his home in Puerto Rico. He was 78.
Dickey grew up in Hanover, N.H., where his father, John Sr., was president of Dartmouth College from 1945 to 1970. Dickey Jr. graduated from Dartmouth in 1963 with a bachelor’s degree in geology. On a Fulbright scholarship, he earned a master’s degree in geology in 1965 from the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. In 1969, he earned a Ph.D. in geology from Princeton.
He was a member of the Smithsonian research team that first examined the moon rocks from Apollo 11. His career included positions at MIT (assistant professor), National Science Foundation (program director), Syracuse University (chair of the geology department), Trinity University in San Antonio (dean of science, math, and engineering), and the American Geophysical Union (director of outreach and research support).
In addition to articles of scholarship, Dickey wrote On the Rocks (Wiley, 1988), a book about the Earth and planetary sciences for the general public. He also published two collections of poetry, lyric poems about rural life, and an epic poem about the Earth and the solar system.
Dickey is survived by his wife, Lynn; one son; and two grandchildren.
Graduate alumni memorials are prepared by the APGA.