PEOPLE
The opal industry in Australia in particular cannot be discussed in a comprehensive way without a discussion regarding those individuals who for their love of precious opal dedicated their lives to its discovery, exploration, mining, cutting and polishing sale and commercial development of the industry. In this section of Opal Academy we will consider people involved in the opal industry in two ways. Those people in the history of the opal industry in Australia who have the older knowledge and those people who have contributed so much to the more modern information about opal. So important are the contributors of information to this endeavour that they are considered in the “contributors” portion of the web site. The contributors to Opal Academy are those people I have had the privileged to meet and talk, chat and discuss aspects of precious opal in Australia. Some are the third generation of opal families like Peter Sherman. Inevitably some of these will overlap in our discussion.
LAurie Aldridge began his scientific career working on the structure of zeolites using X-Ray diffraction (XRD) at the university of Otago in New Zealand.In 1990 Laurie moved to Australia to work at ANSTO specializing in cement chemistry and the structure of minerals and clays. More recently Laurie has joined with my self (Anthony Smallwood) and Paul Thomas (UTS) to study precious opal structure.