European Mineralogical Union
Medal for Research Excellence 2006

Bruno Lanson

Bruno Lanson was born in 1965 in Châtellerault, France. After a Civil Engineer degree from the Ecole Supérieure d'Ingénieurs in Poitiers (1987), he obtained a PhD in Geology (1990) in Paris, under the supervision of Bruce Velde. He carried out his post-doctoral research activity at the USGS (Denver, 1990-92) and subsequently at the Mineral Geochemistry Laboratory of Elf-Aquitaine Production Co (Pau, 1992-94). Researcher at the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) since 1995, he is presently head of the Environmental Geochemistry Group at the LGIT (Geophysics and Tectonophysics Laboratory, Joseph Fourier University, Grenoble, France).
The work of Bruno Lanson is devoted to the structure of finely divided minerals, i.e., the phyllosilicates and phyllomanganates (clays minerals, lamellar oxides) and their physical properties, particularly their surface reactivity. He contributed to make this field of research a key discipline in the Earth's surface studies, as it applies to a large range of environmental aspects.
Bruno Lanson’s early achievement was a coherent, simple decomposition method of the complex X-ray diffraction spectra obtained from the clay mineral mixtures found in sedimentary rocks. This work resulted in a user-friendly computer program which, even after a decade of concurrent development, remains one of the most robust.  Since then Lanson explores and characterizes the relationship between the structure and macroscopic properties of clays and phyllomanganates by new advanced microscopic techniques (TEM-SAED…), diffraction and spectroscopic techniques (XANES, EXAFS…) coupled with synchrotron X-ray sources. He masters these techniques and applies them to important problems in crystal- and environmental chemistry, such as the role of structural defects of minerals in their surface reactivity properties.

The questions of minor and toxic element capture and release by manganese minerals are of prime importance in sites of industrial pollution. They are addressed by Lanson through the identification, structural and chemical, of oxide nanocrystals produced by bacteria or found on and within root hairs of plants grown under controlled conditions. At the same time, Lanson has been active in solving the problems of clay-mineral evolution under conditions of changing temperature and chemistry.  He linked the quantitative description of complex parageneses to the kinetic processes of clay transformation occurring in natural (sediments) or perturbed (storages) conditions.
Some of those highly original works were completed with students who have been already nationally and internationally recognized, and through international collaborations, abroad (e.g. in Princeton) and spanning Europe from Karlsruhe to Moscow.
Bruno Lanson is a very talented scientist, who has achieved international recognition as one of the leading workers in his field. He undoubtedly will continue to make major advances in the physico-chemical characterization of lamellar nano-minerals and in the understanding of their interaction with the living world in the Earth's surface complex systems. For the international value and relevance of his work to the questionings in environmental sciences, Bruno Lanson fully deserves the EMU Excellence Research Medal for 2006.