[meteorite-list] Oscar E. Monnig Meteorite Gallery

From: almitt2 at localnet.com <almitt2_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2011 01:48:06 -0500
Message-ID: <20110110014806.3z6vv3sr1ym8swk4_at_webmail.localnet.com>

Greetings,

Here is something I put together on Oscar Monnig for another forum. I
borrowed heavily from the TCU site. Best!

--AL Mitterling
Mitterling Meteorites

Greetings,

This is in regards to the Oscar Monnig Collection.

Oscar Monnig was the Harvey Nininger of Texas and mid south region when
it came to meteorites. He was born in Texas (Forth Worth and Dallas
area) and became a lawyer and family business man in the area. He had
an interest in astronomy and Meteorites.

In the early-1930s he started his own private meteorite collection, due
in part from other institutions cold reception of having him study
their specimens. He had made many requests to do so. Of these
institutions were the Smithsonian Institution, the Field Museum, and
the American Museum of Natural History. This gave way to his increased
interest in generating his own private collection for study.

He interviewed witnesses of meteor detonations or bolides (exploding
fireballs) and he organized and financed in searching expeditions. He
paid 1 dollar per pound, a price that museums could not match at the
time of the Great Depression. Buying specimens out from under the
institutions that had snubbed him! He worked with Harvey Nininger in
the field when they happened upon a fall at the same time. The two
would always cooperate on such a fall. (don't see that today do you!)

His collection slowly grew to be one of the largest and great private
collections in the world: it contained about 3,000 specimens from 400
different meteorites. Two impressive specimens both in scientific value
and uniqueness were two carbonaceous chondrites, found at Crescent,
Oklahoma, in 1936 and the Bells, Texas Meteorite, found in 1961.

In order to find a permanent home for his collection in the Forth Worth
area were he was from, Monnig later decided to donate the collection to
Texas Christian University. A number of transfer of specimens, between
1976 and 1986 were made. The collection contains over 1,000 different
meteorites. In 2003, four years after he died, the Oscar E. Monnig
Meteorite Gallery was opened, exhibiting about 10 per cent of the
meteorites to the public.

A side note that Dr. Elhman the past curator of the collection, took
time to further expand the collection by taking extras and making
trades with other institutes to further increase the collection to it's
current greatness. Dr. Elhman mentioned to me that Oscar would never
turn down a farmer who had a meteorite, and always paid them. This
generated a knowledge if you found a meteorite and took it to him, he
would buy it. This kept a steady flow of specimens coming his way. He
was a wise old German who was smart with his money and the many
meteorites he found. He did write a few good papers on the Odessa,
Texas Meteorite Craters.


--AL Mitterling

References and some interesting sites to learn more about the
collection and the man!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Monnig

http://monnigmuseum.tcu.edu/oscar.htm
Biography of Oscar

http://monnigmuseum.tcu.edu/



Quoting Pete Pete <rsvp321 at hotmail.com>:

>
> Hello, all,
>
> I stumbled onto this site worth viewing - Oscar E. Monnig's meteorite
> gallery:
>
> http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/4299332/Main/4298136
> http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/4299332/Main/4298136
>
> Cheers,
> Pete
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Received on Mon 10 Jan 2011 01:48:06 AM PST