Lifetime Achievement Award: Immigration

Mcgill University Dept: The pioneering scientist, who taught at the University of Montreal for 31 years and maintained a research office at McGill University during the last decade, died of a heart attack in Montreal on May 19 at the age of 73, according to Globe And Mail. In 1980, he received the Billings Medal from the Geological Association of Canada. Usually a lifetime achievement award, he earned it as a young scholar, only 44 years of age. Fifteen years later he was awarded the Willet Green Miller medal of the Royal Society of Canada for “outstanding research in any field of the earth sciences.” Finally, in 2002 he became the only Canadian to win the Charles Doolittle Walcott medal of the U.S. National Academy of Science for outstanding “individual achievement in advancing knowledge of Precambrian life and its history.” Although trained as a geologist, he spent his career searching for and finding evidence of early life in very ancient rocks. His discoveries helped the geological and paleontological world fill in gaps in the little-known Precambrian era, a time period that stretches roughly from 540-million to 4.5-billion years ago. His work had him delving into the micro-organisms that predated more advanced species. Jokingly, Hofmann liked to compare his research to “being the window-washer in an underground parking garage,” according to his former student Guy Narbonne, research chair in paleontology at Queen’s University in Kingston. He was considered by many to be Canada’s most important paleontologist. Besides publishing more than 100 refereed scientific papers, delivering as many conference presentations and some 200 keynote addresses at scholarly meetings around the globe, he won several distinguished prizes. As reported in the news.
@t guy narbonne, geological association of canada