怀念侯老

侯德封教授是一位道德高尚、学识渊博,为中国地质科研事业的开拓做出了贡献的著名科学家。侯老以其地层观点、化学地理及化学地史观点、古气候观点和成矿元素本质特征为基点的学术思想,指导和带动全所同志完成了国家经济建设中的许多资源、能源方面的急需任务;有所发现,有所突破。侯德村同志晚年,由于对成矿理论方面的深入探索,开始了“核子地质”方面的追求,出版了论著。但因侯老的过早谢世,这项工作还有望于后人的接力。

IN MEMORY OF PROFESSOR HOU DEFENG

Prof. Hou Defeng is a well known geologist, and expert in many fields in geological sciences. He possesses a noble morality and a quality of both solemn and enthusiastic. He had many conducing contributions to the development and progressing of Institute of Geology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.He was the first Director of our Institute since the establishment of our Institute in 1950 untill his death in 1980. Within this 30 years, he was working ever so hard, under the hearty support of our government and the unite struggle of our colleagues to push the reformation of our old, almost out of date, small Institute to a fairly large modernized new research institute, with almost every necessary research branches of investigation and relevant well equipped laboratories, together with several hundreds of research personals. This is surely a big jump of our Institute. And this big jump was led directly by Prof. Hou Defeng.Untill the early 60's, the constituentes of our Institute had grown very much.Besides the original Department of Straitigraphy and Paleontology, Department of Geotectonics, Department of Crystalography and Petrology, etc., six additional departments and Laboritories were erected, including Sedimentology and sedimentary mineral deposits; Isotopic geology; Rare earth Geochemistry; Continental oil and gas geology; and Engineering geology. Besides, the Department of Quaternary Geology had expanded, and 4 modernized analytical laboritories were built, including the Differential-thermal analysis lab., the Synthetic Quartz Crystal lab.; Paleomagnetism lab.; and Central Lab. of Chemical Analysis. Many of the equipments or apparatus were selfmade, such as the mass spectrometer, the differemtial-thermal apparatus,and the apparatus of synthetic quartz crystals. This spirit of own-struggle was urged on and conduced by Prof. Hou as well.Hou is serious and solemn on works, but quite humorous in leisure gossips instead, he would murmurring "from south of the mountains to north of the seas".Hou knows also Chinese Beijing Opera and Chinese water-ink painting. His paintings possess some sort of geological taste, you can just read the “strike” and “dip” of the rocks where he showed.I always feel a deep loss wherever I fell in recalling of the 30 years good times that we shared. During those 30 years we constantly worked together in the field and interchanging our scientific thinkings in the office or laboratories. Hou is surely not only my friend, my comrade, but most important also my teacher. I surely learned much from him. I remembered, that was in the autumn of 1952, just before the official establishment of the Ministry of Geology, there was held a convention of “Surveyings that awaiting the efforts of Geologists” in Beijing. In the plenary symposium. Hou was one of the 4 specialists invited to deliver a key speech.He talked about “The hunting of Fe, Mn mineral deposits based upon the stratigraphic view-point”. This talking was apparently designed to meet the national need for the iron deposits works then organized surrounding the Anshan District. No long after the erection of our Institute in 1950, Hou led us to begin the investigation of manganese deposits, because this was the hot-need material for our steel industry at that time. And we were blessing to discovered a huge high grade manganese carbonate deposits. With the experience of these practices, Hou presented two important papers, viz., “The geochemical geography and geochemical historical geology”, and “The Paleoclimate of China”.From these three papers ascribed above, it can be clearly seen, that the motive of Prof. Hou's geological investigations were based firstly upon the need of the national reconstructions and his doctrine of thinking was mainly conducted by his “Stratigraphical view-point”, and his princples were derived from “The Geochemical Geography and Geocbemical Historical Geology” and “Paleo-climate”. From these view points and principles, it seems quite clear that in Hou's idea, the kernel points of metallogeny lies two-fold; th