Tracy Hall Dead at 88
Posted on July 30th, 2008 by John Mansfield
The featured obituary in today’s Washington Post is:
H. Tracy Hall, 88, who earned a place among America’s scientific wizards as a principal figure in the creation of artificial diamonds, died July 25 at his home in Provo, Utah. He had Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes.
On Feb. 15, 1955, the New York Times reported on its front page that Dr. Hall and three colleagues at the General Electric Research Laboratory in Schenectady, N.Y., had “for the first time created exact duplicates of the diamond.”
. . .
When Dr. Hall unsealed his apparatus in Schenectady on Dec. 16, 1954, he recognized that he had made a breakthrough. As he later recalled the moment, his reaction was appropriate to the occasion.
“My hands began to tremble; my heart beat rapidly; my knees weakened and no longer gave support,” he wrote. “My eyes had caught the flashing light from dozens of tiny . . . crystals.”
“And I knew,” he added, “that diamonds had finally been made by man.”
The diamonds Dr. Hall made at GE could be measured in thousandths of an inch. Larger diamonds were eventually made.
Although Dr. Hall never received it, the work was worthy of the Nobel Prize, according to Robert M. Hazen, an earth sciences professor at George Mason University and a research scientist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, who wrote a book about the development of the synthetic diamond industry.
“Tracy Hall is justifiably called by some people the father of synthetic diamonds,” Hazen said in an interview.
It was a century-old scientific goal, Hazen said, and Dr. Hall was “the very key person” in the team that after three years of work made “an earth-shaking discovery.”
. . .
After returning to Utah in 1955, Dr. Hall became research director at Brigham Young University in Provo, inventing apparatuses to continue his work in chemistry at high pressures. He and two fellow professors set up a company to make diamonds and high-pressure equipment.
He was active in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and he and his wife, Ida-Rose, served on a mission in Zimbabwe and South Africa. After retirement, he was a tree farmer in Payson, Utah.
His wife, whom he married in 1941, died in 2005.
Survivors include seven children; four brothers; 35 grandchildren; and 53 great-grandchildren.
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5 Responses to “Tracy Hall Dead at 88”
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Thanks for this memorial, John.
I remember this man as bishop Hall.
I regret that I had never heard of Tracy Hall before today. But this evening I am meeting with a relative whose successful business relies on an innovative use of artificial diamond in the medical field, so I’ll talk to him about Bro. Hall.
Sad. I’ll always have fond memories of the diamond making machine in the ESC lobby.
I think Prof. Hall’s son (or maybe his grandson), also Tracy Hall, comments from time to time on Mormon-themed blogs.
And his son David, who has done much better financially in the synthetic diamond business than his father ever did, apparently has an impressive collection of early Mormon documents.
The thing I liked most about this obituary is that he retired and became a tree farmer. The thing that immediately came to mind was the allegory of the olive tree farmer in Jacob 5. There must be something special about tree farming.