Kula C. Misra
Professor Emeritus
Economic Geochemistry
Last summer was a hectic time for Kula. In addition to the normal preparation for participation in the 1995 International Conference on Carbonate-hosted Base Metal Deposits at St. Louis, he coordinated all the pre- and post-Conference field trips in U.S. and Canada, and edited a comprehensive Field Trip Guidebook. He was a co-leader (with Bob Fulweiler of the Tennessee Division of Geology) for the trip to the Central and East Tennessee zinc districts. The most exciting part of this mammoth task, however, was the trip he led to the Polaris and Nanisivik Mississippi Valley-type Pb-Zn deposits in the Canadian Arctic. The vagaries of the Arctic weather did create a few difficult logistics problems and some anxious moments, but the rewards were enormous. All things considered, it will be cherished as an unforgettable experience.
The highlight of the later part of the summer was a trip to eastern Europe to participate in the biannual SGA Conference at Praha, Czech Republic, which included a special symposium on shale-hosted stratiform copper deposits and a companion field trip to the Kupferschiefer-type deposits around Lubin, Poland. Although this deposit type lacks the enormity of porphyry copper operations or the spectacular grades of massive sulfide deposits, the Polish deposits provide an excellent example of the control of sedimentation and diagenesis in generating economic mineralization.
The revised edition (third) of our collaborative Physical Geology (Geol. 101) Lab Manual, edited by Kula, was published in time for the Fall Semester. We now also have a preliminary version of the Lab Manual for our introductory course on Environmental Geology (Geol. 103), a massive collaborative effort edited by Kula. After trial runs during the last two semester, the stage is now set for a revised and updated final version, which should be ready for printing toward the end of the Fall Semester. The interest of some giant publishing companies in this Lab Manual is quite gratifying and we intend to capitalize on it as soon as possible. Our combined 101-103 enrollment in 1995-96 was more than 1,200!
Kula's plunge into environmental geochemistry has started paying dividends. One of his Ph.D. students, Dibyendu Sarkar, has started an experimental-modeling investigation of mercury adsorption-desorption on variable charged surfaces. He will soon be presenting an invited paper in a national Soil Science symposium. Efforts are also under way to start a project on the oxidation of elemental mercury in collaboration with Ralph Turner of the ORNL Environmental Sciences Division. Lucia Couto is expected to complete her dissertation in a few months on the greenstone-hosted O'Toole nickel sulfide deposit (Brazil). After finishing his Ph.D., Changsheng Lu joined the Jacob Engineering Group (Oak Ridge) and is reported to be doing extremely well.
Geeta still works in the UT Hospital Pharmacy. Their daughter, Lolly, is married and well settled in Memphis as a Marketing Officer with the Federal Express. Their son, Anand, is a Financial Analyst, and has also joined the Federal Express after a couple of years with Auto Zone.
Kula Misra
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
1412 Circle Drive
Knoxville, TN 37996-1410
Phone: (865) 974-6020
Email: kmisra@utk.edu