The scientific community suffered a great loss last week with the passing of O. Richard Norton. A prolific and brilliant science author, Richard specialized in astronomy and meteorite studies and wrote a number of important books including: Rocks from Space, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Meteorites, The Planetarium and Atmospherium: An Indoor Universe, and The Field Guide to Meteors and Meteorites. Richard was a former director of the Flandrau Planetarium here in Tucson, served for many years on the editorial board of Meteorite magazine, and was a regular visitor to the annual Tucson gem shows. The gem show will never quite be the same for me, as I’ll always be expecting to find Richard exclaiming about the beauty of some type of rare meteorite he’d found in one of the show rooms.

Richard Norton accepts a Harvey Award for outstanding contributions to the field of meteoritics, during the 2003 Tucson gem show. His wife, Dorothy (smiling in background), was co-recipient of the award.

Richard was a friend and colleague and a great personal inspiration to me in my own writing. In fact, he edited my second-ever published science article, many years ago. He was one of those rare science writers who had the ability to share his enthusiasm and vast store of knowledge in a way that made it accessible and engaging to the non-academic reader.

In recent years he lived in Bend, Oregon where he worked closely with his wife Dorothy — a popular and accomplished scientific illustrator.

Welcome to the first installment of The Logical Lizard.

I am a science writer and columnist, a television documentary host, meteorite hunter, photographer, musician and artist. I was born in New York City’s East Village, but grew up in London, England. I have been visiting the Southwest since I was a little boy, attended my first Tucson gem show in 1998, and made Tucson my permanent home in January of 2004. I haven’t looked back for a minute.

I love this small, quirky city and the way in which it inexplicably balances an avant-garde arts and music scene with a cutting edge scientific research community, a lingering Wild West frontier atmosphere, shockingly hot summers and pitch-perfect winters, and a vibrant Mexican influence. It is the perfect home for a cultural misfit with too many interests.

Outside my exhibition room during the 2009 Tucson gem showcase. I designed the neon sign and it was fabricated for me by a local artist.

In this blog I intend to muse on my specialities which include meteoritics (the study of space rocks), astronomy, geology, ecology, paleontology, wildlife photography, adventure travel, cinema, punk rock, painting and the graphic arts. My late mother often used to comment, jokingly, that I should “focus on just one thing and become really good at it,” but, alas, it was not to be.

Our talented and charming blog editor, Ryn Gargulinski, has encouraged me to use this forum to range across my various interests, and I think we’re going to get along just fine. Thank you for reading. I will do my best to keep you amused, entertained, informed and maybe, once in a while, enlightened as well.

See you tomorrow.

Photograph by Jim Breitinger Utah Red Rock