He is best known for his co-authorship of a series of reference books that summarise the physical, chemical and optical properties of the rock forming minerals that were published between 1962 and 2013, which are widely known as Deer, Howie and Zussman or DHZ.
[6] In 1962, he was appointed reader in mineralogy at the University of Oxford,[7] but he returned to Manchester to take up the Chair of Geology and post of head of department in 1967.
[8] One moon rock sample was placed on display in a museum in Manchester for a week, just two months after being collected by Neil Armstrong.
Later, Zussman recalled overhearing a visitor say ‘I’ve seen something like that in our grate’ on seeing the dark and bubbly samples of lunar lava.
[12] In 1961, it was announced that Jack Zussman and two fellow mineralogists who were also at the University of Manchester, Bob Howie and Alex Deer were working on a book on rock-forming minerals.