Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

George Switzer, 92, Dies; Started a Gem Treasury

George Switzer, the mineralogist who started the Smithsonian Institution’s vast collection of gems and minerals by acquiring the legendary, and some say bedeviled, Hope Diamond, died on March 23 in Solomons, Md. He was 92 and lived in Port Republic, Md.

The cause was pneumonia, his son Mark said.

Dr. Switzer, who also played a significant role in analyzing rocks brought back from the moon, was chairman of the mineral sciences department at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History from 1964 to 1969. He had been associate curator of the museum’s division of mineralogy from 1948 to 1964.

When Harry Winston, the renowned New York City jewelry merchant, decided to donate the 45.52-carat, steely-blue Hope Diamond to the Smithsonian in 1958, the arrangements were made by Dr. Switzer.

“That started the national collection,” Sorena Sorensen, the current chairwoman of the Smithsonian’s mineral sciences department, said in an interview Wednesday.

“At midcentury, great gemologists around the country were talking about building a national collection to rival the crown jewel collections of Europe,” Dr. Sorensen continued. “The idea for the national collection at the Smithsonian was a collaboration between Harry Winston and George.”

On Nov. 10, 1958, Mr. Winston’s wife, Edna, presented the Hope Diamond to Leonard Carmichael, then the secretary of the Smithsonian, and to Dr. Switzer. Soon after it went on display, the Hope — surrounded in a pendant by 16 white diamonds on a necklace containing 45 more white diamonds — became one of the museum’s premier attractions.

There are now about 15,000 gems, 350,000 mineral specimens, 300,000 rock and ore specimens and 35,000 meteorites in the Smithsonian collection, one of the most comprehensive in the world.

Dr. Switzer’s contributions went beyond acquisitions. In the 1970s, he played a central role in helping the museum get, through a grant from NASA, an electron probe micro-analyzer for minerals. The instrument, then new, allows scientists to determine a mineral’s origin; for example, whether it was crystallized from a molten state.

Image
George Switzer, right, and Leonard Carmichael, the Smithsonian secretary, accepting the Hope Diamond from Edna Winston.Credit...Smithsonian Institution Archives

Using the micro-analyzer, Dr. Switzer and other mineralogists examined samples brought back from the moon by the Apollo 15 and 16 crews. Their work helped determine that the moon never had water on its surface and never had an atmosphere like Earth’s.

“This showed that museums could become places where cutting-edge science was carried out,” Dr. Sorensen said. “It put the Smithsonian at the forefront of instrumental technology in geology.”

Dr. Switzer also worked with other scientists on examining and naming five newly discovered mineral species. After three mineralogists — John S. White, Peter B. Leavens and Pier F. Zanazzi —analyzed pale brown crystals from North Carolina, they proposed that the manganese phosphate mineral be named in honor of Dr. Switzer. In 1967, the International Mineralogical Association approved the designation: Switzerite.

Born on June 11, 1915, in Petaluma, Calif., George S. Switzer was the son of Albert and Charlotte Ryan Switzer. Besides his son Mark, of Port Republic, Dr. Switzer is survived by his wife of 68 years, the former Sue Bowden; another son, James, also of Port Republic; eight grandchildren; and 12 great-grandchildren.

Dr. Switzer graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1937, then earned a master’s degree in mineralogy in 1939 and a Ph.D. in 1942, both at Harvard. Before joining the staff at the Smithsonian in 1948, he taught at Stanford and Harvard.

As an associate curator, Dr. Switzer approached Mr. Winston and began sharing the dream of a national gem collection. Mr. Winston had bought the Hope Diamond in 1949 from the estate of Evalyn Walsh McLean, whose father had struck it rich in a Western gold rush.

There are gaps in the Hope’s provenance, but it is known to have passed through the hands of three French kings and Queen Marie Antoinette before being stolen during a looting of the crown jewels in 1792. It later came into the possession of King George IV of England and, in 1839, entered the collection of Henry Philip Hope, heir to a British banking fortune. Because of financial and other troubles that befell many of its possessors (Marie Antoinette lost her head), the diamond was said to be cursed.

When, in April 1962, Dr. Switzer carried the Hope to Paris for an exhibition at the Louvre, he began to wonder whether there was truth to the curse. Museum officials had determined that secrecy would the best security.

“My mother sewed this little velvet pouch and the Hope was put in the pouch and the pouch was safety-pinned to the inside of my father’s pants pocket,” Mark Switzer said. “The plane did a hard landing in Pittsburgh, almost tore the wing off.”

Upon arrival in Paris, nine hours late on the day the exhibition opened, Dr. Switzer got into a car with French officials. “They end up with a classic Paris fender-bender on the way to the Louvre,” Mr. Switzer said. “It was a running family joke.”

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT