Geologist John Livermore’s career hit pay dirt—literally—when in the early 1960s he co-discovered a 5-by-40-mile gold ore body in northeastern Nevada. The Carlin Trend, as the formation came to be known, became one of the world’s richest gold regions, producing more than 70 million ounces of gold (as of 2008) worth about $85 billion.
Livermore, ’40, died February 7 of cancer at his home in Reno, Nevada. He was 94.
The son of famed Marin conservationist Caroline Livermore, John Sealy Livermore was born in San Francisco in 1918. He first became interested in geology on a summer oil exploration trip to Alaska and graduated from Stanford with a degree in geology.
Early in his career Livermore helped build the Basic Magnesium plant in Henderson, Nev., and worked as a prospector at the Standard Mine near Lovelock, Nev. Then in the 1950s he turned his attention to studying Nevada’s geology. Prior to that time, gold typically was sought in rocks created by lava or magma, but Livermore developed techniques to find gold specks so small they could be seen only with a microscope. Applying these innovations, he and a colleague, Alan Coope, drilled near Carlin in 1961 and staked several claims on behalf of their employer, Newmont Mining. Livermore worked as head of Newmont’s gold exploration efforts in Canada until 1970, then returned to Nevada to develop several mines that helped drive an exploration boom during the 1980s.
Livermore worked in the field until he was 92. His career took him all over the world, from South America to Africa and the Middle East. He received numerous professional honors including the Daniel Jackling award from the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers, and in 2000 he was inducted to the National Mining Hall of Fame.
“There’s that saying that special people see common things in uncommon ways,” his nephew Dave Livermore told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “He was able to look at the landscape and say, ‘There’s something here.’ ”
Livermore’s brothers Norman, ’33, and George, ’36, predeceased him. He is survived by his brother Putnam as well as several nieces and nephews, including Dick Livermore, ’68, Pauline Livermore Jefferson, ’68, and Samuel Livermore, JD ’78.
Rachel Kolb, '12, is a graduate student in English and a Stanford intern.
