Winter 2010

A Fond Farewell

Alice S. Keller

This is indeed a fond farewell. In January 2011, I am stepping down from G&G, and retiring from GIA, after 30 years first as managing editor, then editor, and most recently editor-in-chief of the journal. As is so often stated, I am doing so “for personal reasons.” But there are no secrets here. My daughter, Elizabeth, is expecting twins in February, my first grandchildren. She has asked for my help. How can I say no?

Elizabeth was less than a year old when Richard Liddicoat hired me in 1980 to remake G&G as a true professional journal. I arrived at GIA with several years’ experience working for peer-reviewed marketing and medical journals and with some knowledge of the geology and gemology communities. I thought I would rework the journal and move on. But as so many of you know, gemology is addictive. Soon I was enthralled with the possibilities G&G offered to promote this relatively new science.

In the early years of the “new” G&G, most of our articles revolved around colored stones: separation from simulants and synthetics, identification of treatments, and especially characterization of new and historic localities, such as emeralds from Colombia and lapis lazuli from Afghanistan. In the 1990s, we published some of the earliest reports on copper-bearing tourmalines from Paraíba, Brazil; rubies and sapphires from Vietnam; and rubies from Mong Hsu, Myanmar. Since then, groundbreaking articles on emerging gem deposits in Madagascar and countries on the African continent have appeared.

Over the years, though, diamonds became more prominent in the pages of the journal. Perhaps G&G’s strongest contribution to the diamond community over the last three decades has been the articles on the characterization and identification of synthetic diamonds. Yet I am equally proud of our reporting on diamond treatments and especially the identification of glass-filled diamonds in the late ’80s and early ’90s. A decade later, the more sophisticated—and potentially more devastating—HPHT treatment of diamonds was successfully tackled in G&G by researchers from the GIA, Gübelin, De Beers, and SSEF laboratories, among others. We know that it is only by cooperation and collaboration—and the sharing of information in a respected forum—that gemology can progress as a science in support of public confidence in the gem and jewelry industry.

I can take little credit, though, for what is one of G&G’s most important contributions to the science of gemology: becoming the first gemological journal admitted to the Thomson Reuters (formerly ISI) database, the world’s foremost resource for accessing scientific content. Editor Brendan Laurs rallied the support of leading researchers to secure this honor and thus enhance the stature of gemology in the scientific community.

With this, my last issue, I extend to you—the readers of G&G—my heartfelt thanks for your support all these years. I have loved interacting with you first by mail then by e-mail, visiting with you at trade shows, and sharing experiences at the GIA International Symposia. In fact, GIA has asked me to complete one last project—my role as co-chair of the business track of GIA Symposium 2011, which will be held May 29–30 at GIA headquarters in Carlsbad, California. It will give me great pleasure to see many of you there and thank you in person.

At this time, I turn the journal over to the capable hands of interim editor-in-chief Brendan Laurs, managing editor Tom Overton, and associate editor Stuart Overlin. Please give them your support as well. They are the future of gemology, as told through the pages of G&G.

With best personal regards,
Alice S. Keller