Giants often walk among us, but we are not aware because they move so quietly ... such was Richard Bideaux. This tall, lanky individual was so much a fixture on the mineral scene for most of his life that any shows in the future without him will be lacking.

Richard was a native Tucsonian, born on 28 March 1935 to George and Jeanette Bideaux. He is survived by a sister, Janet Bideaux of Tucson; a nephew, Tayo (wife Kristine) van Marle; and a grandnephew, Aidan van Marle, of Liberty Lake, Washington. At an early age (about thirteen) it was obvious that science--and, in particular, minerals--was to be a lifelong passion. When Richard discovered that the surrounding areas of Tucson were a source of minerals, he convinced his father to take him collecting. How fortuitous that one of those areas was the famous Old Yuma mine, only a few miles from the city center. At age seventeen he collected the entire suite of species that occur at the mine, organized them, explaining their mineralogical paragenesis, and then entered the display into an equivalent of today's well-known science fairs. It was no surprise that he won a national prize in the eleventh annual Westinghouse Science Talent Search in 1952. The award included a trip to Washington, D.C., where his discovery of the Smithsonian's mineral gallery, no doubt, sealed his future for a lifelong interest in minerals, not only as a hobby, but also, later, as a business and major contributor to the science of minerals. His meeting with then-curator George Switzer was a highlight of that trip.

Richard attended the University of Arizona and received a bachelor's degree in geological engineering in 1959. Shortly after graduation, the U.S. Army called him for duty, and his unusually high score on the aptitude test afforded him the opportunity to name his own assignment. No surprise that he chose the East Coast because it allowed him to visit the major museums in the East, meet curators and collectors, and continue his mineral "education" with the help of such people as Hugh Ford, Arthur Montgomery, and other notables in the area. While stationed at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, he was learning a relatively new field: computer programming. This would also have a remarkable effect on his future pursuits.

After the Army in New Jersey, a stint as a research engineer with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, put him in the enviable position of processing imaging data received from the lunar Surveyor I and III missions. To be the first to see images from space was a thrill he never tired of, and his collection of those photos is still remarkable to see.

What Richard did on the East Coast, he also did in the West: no museum was left unvisited, no curator unmet, and some of the best field collectors were "interviewed." It was during this time that the late Paul Desautels (of the Smithsonian Institution) suggested that my husband, Wayne, and I meet Richard (although I always called him "Dick;" I never did ask whether he preferred Richard over Dick).

Tugging at him during his time at JPL was a desire to return to school, and Harvard University was the natural place for him. The great Clifford Frondel was there, as well as Cornelius Hurlburt. What better mentors to have in the mineralogical sciences. He received his master's degree in geology from Harvard in 1968.

His love of his desert pulled him back to Tucson, and from 1968 to 1972 he was vice president of Research and Development for GeoComp and CompuTech, respectively. In 1973 he, along with two colleagues, founded Computing Associates (CA), a pioneering company in computer applications in geology and mine engineering. CA was used by mining companies worldwide, including Cyprus, Asarco, Anaconda, Kennecott, and dozens of others.

The year 1978 was a milestone: the University of Arizona conferred on him the professional degree of geological engineer, and CA was sold to Control Data. Now free to pursue only those projects that were of interest, he became "author" Bideaux. Not that he did not write before: early Mineralogical Record subscribers will well remember his series of columns called The Collector. He was also an associate editor of the magazine. During this time his interest in the Old Yuma mine resurfaced, and he became its owner in 1985. Unfortunately, the mine's location on the edge of a state park made for some testy moments between Dick and the National Park Service. Plans to reopen the mine were always defeated, and eventually the Park Service handed Dick a tidy little sum for the property. Although it was a disappointment that he would never see the mine active nor build his dream house nearby, there was satisfaction in collecting that check. Tenacious to the end ...

Many will remember that Dick's father, George, started Bideaux Minerals in the 1960s, and it continued after George's death in 1979. Dick took over the operation and participated as a dealer in many shows until closing down Bideaux Minerals in 1985. In 1977 Dick and his good friend and former mineralogy professor, John Anthony, wrote the first edition of the Mineralogy of Arizona. Every collector of Arizona minerals loved this topographical mineralogy, and two subsequent editions were published, the third, coauthored with Raymond Grant, in 1995. The first edition of the Glossary of Mineral Species was prepared for Michael Fleischer by Dick (an interesting side note is that the drawing on that first edition was done by the late Paul Desautels).

Many of us remember Dick as a voracious note taker. Never without a batch of index cards in his shirt pocket, he noted specimens, localities, people, new finds, and all matter of mineral trivia. These notes eventually wove their way into probably the most important work on descriptive mineralogy ever published, the Handbook of Mineralogy. Its five volumes have value not only for the professional but also for legions of amateur collectors as a definitive work on mineralogy. Mineral Data Publishing was formed to publish and distribute this monumental work. His coauthors of the series were the late John Anthony, Ken Bladh, and Monte Nichols (it is interesting that Monte met Dick when he was fifteen years old at the Old Yuma mine!). They undertook this project in the early 1980s, and the last volume was published in 2003. Dick turned over the boxes of files connected with the work to the Mineralogical Society of America (MSA). At the time of his death he was still working on updating the species information for MSA's Web site. In notes that I found, the last indication of his work on these updates was on 22 October, the day before he died. He was also editing the new edition of Mineralogy for Amateurs, being updated by Joel Bartsch, and editing a 600-page manuscript on Bisbee, Arizona, by Dick Graeme.

Dick was an officer of MSA's outreach committee and a Life Fellow of MSA; a founding member and the first president of the Friends of Mineralogy; and a member of the Arizona Geological Society, the International Society of Mathematical Geologists, the Association of Exploration Geochemists, and the Tucson Gem and Mineral Society (TGMS), the latter for as long as anyone can remember. He served on the TGMS show committee from 1970 to 1978 and was special exhibits chairman in 1972. In fact, last year's fiftieth anniversary of the Tucson Show was an anniversary for him as well--it was at the very first show that Dick won a blue ribbon. In 1970 his prominence in the mineral world was rewarded with the naming of a new mineral: bideauxite, a rare secondary lead silver chloride fluoride hydroxide (whew!). His keen interest in the minerals occurring at the Mammoth--St. Anthony mine at Tiger, Pinal County, Arizona, resulted in this new species. He had recognized crystals that were not compatible with any known species from the area, and this is now the type material of bideauxite (an excellent reference to bideauxite can be found at mindat. org). Dick's article for the Mineralogical Record (11:155-81, 1980) on the mineralogy of Tiger, Arizona, was as good as it gets. The Mineralogical Record Index contains a listing of all of the articles he wrote for that publication.