In Memoriam: Marian V. Lupulescu (1952–2023)

The mineral world lost a good friend, a mineralogist’s mineralogist, and an exceptionally fine man on 16 July 2023. Dr. Marian V. Lupulescu, longtime curator of geology at the New York State Museum, succumbed to pancreatic cancer after a hard-fought, seven-month battle at Baylor College of Medicine/St. Luke Hospital, located within Houston’s Medical Center, Texas.

Marian was a husband, a father, a grandfather, a research colleague, a frequent coauthor, a fellow gardener, but above all one of my best friends. I was honored to attend the naturalization ceremony in Albany when Marian became a US citizen—a native of Romania, a communist country at the time, who brought his doctorate and extensive geological and mineralogical experience to our shores to become an American. Through the years, I spent many hours in the field in northern New York with Marian sharing my knowledge of interesting localities and gaining his unique insights about geological origin, mineral paragenesis, and geochemistry.

He seemed equally at home in the field observing and collecting, in the lab analyzing, and in his office writing. Marian took his role as the lead mineralogist/geologist for New York State seriously and used a problem-solving approach that involved both seeking collaborators with appropriate skills and mastering new technologies himself as his research required. His focused approach to mineral systematics led to his comprehensive studies of the state’s amphiboles, tourmalines, and apatites, among other mineral groups. His collaborative efforts in geochronology, particularly of New York State’s pegmatites, helped provide a concrete framework in which to consider the Adirondack Highlands and Lowlands. Marian himself identified his research interests as geochronology, iron oxide–apatite deposits from the eastern Adirondack Mountains, kimberlite-like rocks from central New York, mineral systematics, pegmatites of New York, and the rare-earth-element and yttrium mineral potential of New York.

Photo courtesy of the New York State Museum; used with permission.

Between 2001 and 2023, Marian published eighty articles, professional papers, and books as both author and coauthor. These included the description of two new members of the amphibole group (fluoro-pargasite in 2003 and potassic-fluoro-hastingsite in 2005) and the discovery of a number of mineral species new to New York State, including the first important locality for specimens of fluor-dravite. In all, Marian published twenty-eight papers about specimen mineralogy of particular interest to mineral collectors.

Marian was born in Turnu Magurele, Romania, in 1952. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees (magnum cum laude across all Romania) from the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Bucharest, and a PhD in geology from Alexandru Ioan Cuza University in Iasi, Romania. He was a visiting professor at Union College in Schenectady, New York, from 1992 to 1994 and a Senior Fulbright Scholar at the California Institute of Technology in 1998 and 1999. Marian joined the staff of the New York State Museum in 2004 and served as curator of geology until he retired in 2023. Marian died on 16 July 2023. He is survived by his wife, Afina; two daughters, Cristiana and Alexandra; and three grandchildren, Otto, Ava, and Alina.

We miss him dearly.

Steven C. Chamberlain
3140 CEC
Center for Mineralogy
New York State Museum
Albany, New York 12230
[email protected]

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Steven C. Chamberlain

Dr. Steven C. Chamberlain, a consulting editor of Rocks & Minerals, is the coordinator of the Center for Mineralogy at the New York State Museum.