Content provided in partnership with

Died, Julius Weber, 89

Mineralogical Record, Mar/Apr 2005 by Kampf, Anthony R

Noted photomicrographer Julius "Julie" Weber died on March 9, 2003, at the age of 89, leaving behind one of the largest and most remarkable micromount collections ever assembled. For decades, Julie and his close friend Lou Perloff ( 1907-2004) collaborated in their micromounting efforts, each assembling important collections. In 1997, Perloff gave his 20,000+ micromount collection to Weber, bringing the combined total to well over 50,000 specimens. Earlier this year, Julie's wife Mary donated this combined collection to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

Most Popular Articles in Reference: The importance of understanding organizational culture; Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students; What factors attract foreign direct investment?; Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...; How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques; More »

Julius Weber was well known in the mineral community for his work in photomicrography. He provided all of the photographs for the very popular first edition of the Encyclopedia of Minerals (Roberts, Rapp and Weber, 1974). He served as an associate photographer for the Mineralogical Record from 1976 to 1993, and he particularly enjoyed working on the photomicrographic needs of professional mineralogists such as Joe Mandarino, Paul Moore and Bill Roberts. He was a Research Associate in the Department of Mineralogy of the Royal Ontario Museum and in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences of the American Museum of Natural History. Lou Perloff, also well known as a prolific mineral photomicrographer, credited his own renowned photomicrographic acumen to Julie's tutelage.

Before directing his efforts toward minerals, Julie was already a highly accomplished and innovative professional photomicrographer, mostly in the medical field. He published the first Kodachrome (color) photomicrograph in 1939 (in Leica Photography) and published color fluorescent photographs of bacteria as early as 1946. He was the first to use electronic flash in medical photography and the first to photograph living cells using the Zeiss Phase Microscope. Throughout his career, Julie was an innovator, contributing to improvements in photomicrographs and the microscopes, cameras and film that produced them. His photomicrographs appear in no fewer than 61 books.

Julie attended Brooklyn College and Columbia University, but his photographic expertise was largely self-taught. In 1974, Jersey City State College awarded him an honorary Doctor of Science degree. He was a member of the New York Academy of Science, a Fellow of the Biological Photographers Association, a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, and a Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society.

A comprehensive analysis of the combined Weber/Perloff collection will not be attempted here and actually would probably require years of study; however, several particular strengths worth mentioning are the diamond crystals (over 2,200 specimens!), crystallized gold (over 800), pegmatite phosphates (especially from the Palermo #1 mine in New Hampshire and various mines in the Black Hills of South Dakota) and secondary uranium minerals (especially from the Shaba region of the Democratic Republic of Congo). The scope of the collection, both in terms of mineral species and localities, is amazing. Assembled over the course of more than half a century, it actually represents a much longer collecting period, as hundreds of mounts from earlier collections, such as those of Clarence S. Bernent and George W. Fiss, were obtained and incorporated by Weber and Perloff.

For more than 25 years, the Mineral Sciences Department of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County has placed a high priority on building its micromount collection into a valuable research, teaching and reference resource. With the addition of this collection, the museum's micromount collection has grown to nearly 100,000 specimens. Other significant collections donated to the museum include those of Wayne and Dona Leicht (1979), Benjamin J. Chromy (1985), William E. Davis (1986), Harold C. Hiebert (1987), Juanita and Charles Curtis (1988-2005), George Tunell (1989 & 1994), Jessie Hardman (1991-2000), Leonard Lobsenz (1999) and Hugh McCulloch (2004).

Anthony R. Kampf

Died, Julius Weber, 89

Mineralogical Record, Mar/Apr 2005 by Kampf, Anthony R

Find Research Guides for:

Find Featured Titles for: News

Most Popular Articles in Reference

Most Popular Publications in Reference