Hello, and thank you for reading!

This is my personal page on Mindat, and I will update it from time to time to explain a little more about me, my background, and my interests.

As you probably know, I created Mindat.org. It began as a personal mineral database that I wrote from scratch, starting on Christmas Day 1993. The first website version of Mindat.org went live in October 2000, the year before Wikipedia launched. Since then it has grown far beyond anything I could have imagined, thanks to the huge efforts of everyone who has contributed photographs, locality information, references, corrections, discussions, and expertise over the years.

Mindat has always brought together several things that matter to me: minerals, locality data, computing, photography, history, travel, and the idea that specialist knowledge should be preserved and shared as widely as possible.

My own interest in minerals began when I was six years old. My first specimen was a pebble containing some very rough quartz crystals, found at Tintagel in Cornwall during a family holiday in the summer of 1976.

That small Cornish pebble started a lifelong interest in minerals and collecting. I have always been fascinated not only by the beauty of mineral specimens, but by the information attached to them: where they came from, who found them, what geological setting produced them, how they were recorded, and how much knowledge can be lost if labels, localities, references, and specimen histories are not preserved.

Computing entered my life almost as early as mineralogy. In 1980 I was in a pilot class for one of the first groups of 10- and 11-year-olds in the UK to be taught computing as a permanent part of the school curriculum. I got my first home computer in 1982, and that same year, at the age of 12, I won a national competition in Popular Computing Weekly for a program I wrote about the periodic table of the elements in Prolog.

Looking back, that early program seems oddly predictive: it combined computing, chemistry, classification, structured information, and the need to make scientific data easier to explore. Those same ideas have followed me ever since.

I later studied geology at Imperial College, Royal School of Mines, London. I did not complete the course, leaving instead to pursue a full-time career in computing, but geology and mineralogy remained central interests.

During the 1990s I was involved in software development for the Commodore Amiga through Almathera Systems Ltd. I was project lead and senior developer for Photogenics, a 24-bit graphics and image manipulation package for the Amiga. We also published a pioneering range of CD-ROM titles. One of these was Fractal Universe for the Amiga CDTV, which I co-authored in 1992. It was endorsed by Arthur C. Clarke and used in his documentary Colours of Infinity.

For several years I was also involved in computer forensic work for police forces. This included forensic examinations, giving evidence in court, and providing expert advice to barristers. I also wrote for the International Journal of Forensic Computing. It was a fascinating and demanding area of work, requiring great care with evidence, accuracy, documentation, and the ability to explain technical issues clearly to non-technical audiences.

After that I worked in web development and database-backed systems, which eventually became the technical foundation for Mindat.org. What began as a private mineral database slowly became a public website, then a collaborative database, and eventually a major international mineralogical resource.

In 2014 I moved to working full-time on Mindat and related mineralogical data projects. In 2015, Mindat.org was donated to the Hudson Institute of Mineralogy, giving it a long-term not-for-profit educational home. I continue to work on Mindat and related mineralogical data systems through Mineral Analytics Ltd.

My work on Mindat has been recognised with the Mineralogical Society of America Distinguished Public Service Medal in 2011, and the Marsh Award for Mineralogy in the UK in 2019. Both awards mean a great deal to me, but Mindat has never been the work of one person alone. It exists because of the knowledge, generosity, patience, and sometimes very robust corrections of a global community of contributors and experts.

My main mineralogical interests are broad rather than narrow. I am interested in mineral localities, specimen provenance, historical data, mineral photography, labels, collections, and the way mineralogical information is recorded and transmitted. I am especially interested in how we can preserve information that might otherwise disappear: old labels, obscure references, locality changes, dealer histories, mine names, collection records, and the countless small details that make a specimen scientifically and historically useful.

Outside Mindat and mineral work, I am married and have one son. My hobbies include mineral collecting, reading, and travel. These overlap strongly with my work: travel often means visiting museums, localities, shows, or collections; reading often leads me back into mineral history; and collecting constantly reminds me why accurate information matters.

Mindat started as my personal database, but it belongs now to a much wider community. My hope is that it continues to help collectors, researchers, museums, students, and anyone curious about minerals to explore, document, and understand the mineral world.