A mineralogist, Pough (pronounced “Poe”) is the author of the essential geological guide, A Field Guide to Rocks and Minerals * (1953). Rather than expect readers to be geologists themselves, the book used photos and good writing to explain its subject, including descriptions on how gems and other minerals are formed, and how to find them in nature.
The result: the book is still in print and has sold more than a million copies. “It was aimed at teenagers as well as adults and identified the specimens that found their way into the hands of many, many people,” said Carl Francis, curator of the Mineralogical Museum at Harvard University. A Harvard researcher named a newly found mineral Poughite in his honor in 1968. Pough apparently enjoyed his work: he never fully retired, and collapsed and died from a heart attack at a mineral show on April 7. He was 99.