Meet Dr. Harry McSween...Meet Dr. Harry McSween...Dr. Harry Y. McSween ("Hap" to those who know him) is a professor and former head of the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. His love and fascination of geology began as a child in Clinton, South Carolina. Knowing he was a rock collector, his uncle in New Jersey often sent him rocks in the mail.
"My uncle also sent me a little book on minerals, and I was hooked. That was my introduction to geology," Dr. McSween says.
Dr. McSween majored in chemistry at The Citadel because no geology major was offered. After serving five years in the Air Force, he went to Harvard University to study rocks.
"My friends all thought I was nuts, going back to school to study rocks when I could get a great job flying," he says. "But I think I made the right choice."
Unlike most geologists, Dr. McSween's attention is drawn to rocks falling from the heavens rather than to those already underfoot. For the past two decades NASA has funded his research on meteorites and how they help us understand the formation and evolution of the solar system. He has also studied Martian meteorites that dropped to Earth.
As a member of the Mars Pathfinder team, Dr. McSween helped NASA decide which rocks they should study on Mars. He and other scientists helped interpret the data sent to Earth from the Mars Pathfinder. Dr. McSween will also be on the science team for the next mission to Mars -- the Mars Surveyor mission.