SKETCHES OF THE FACULTY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF EARTH SCIENCE

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA

1938-2020

HENRY ALDRICH (1891-1979)

Aldrich was Bob Norris' sabbatical leave replacement in 1961-62. He was a recently retired Editor in Chief and Executive Secretary of the Geological Society of America Bulletin and Society, respectively, and had served these roles for many years. Aldrich knew almost all of the leading American geologists and used to say that he was going to write a book titled "Famous Geologists That Have Known Me." Before his GSA service Aldrich taught at the University of Wisconsin.

RALPH J. ARCHULETA, Professor Emeritus

Professor Archuleta graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa Outstanding Student in physics at the University of Wyoming in 1969, followed by his M.S. in physics at UC San Diego. He took his Ph.D. in Earth Sciences at IGPP at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1976, and following postdoctoral appointments in 1976-1978 with support from a National Academy of Sciences National Research Council Fellowship, Archuleta then was a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park until 1984 when he accepted an appointment to the UCSB faculty. Archuleta's seminal work came with his research on the 1979 Imperial Valley earthquake in southern California. With a publication in 1984, Archuleta became the first seismologist to show convincingly that an earthquake could rupture a fault at speeds faster than the shear wave, a fundamental property of elastic materials. Prior to Archuleta's research, most seismologists considered such behavior to be a theoretical curiosity. Several subsequent earthquakes have confirmed his discovery, which has significant implications for seismic hazard analyses. Archuleta's work provides insights into how the earthquake rupture process is directly linked to the strong ground shaking experienced during an earthquake. In addition to his work with the Imperial Valley earthquake, Archuleta has studied the effect of shallow sedimentary structures on strong ground motion. In the early 1980's he installed borehole seismometers at

McGee Creek following the Mammoth Lakes earthquakes. He followed up in the early 1990s when he installed the Garner Valley Downhole Array that has provided crucial data for understanding the variations of acceleration with depth near the surface. He later accepted responsibility for maintaining two other California downhole arrays that had been installed by Kajima Corporation of Japan. These downhole arrays, situated near the San Andreas fault in northern California and between the San Jacinto and San Andreas fault zones in southern California, provide essential data for estimating seismic hazard.

While conducting this critical seismological research, Archuleta also has been an active leader in the seismological world, publishing 10 papers in 2006 while serving as deputy director of the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC). He led UC Santa Barbara's participation as a founding member of SCEC in 1991. He later served as president of the Seismological Society of America in 1997 and 1998. For his outstanding contributions in seismology and earthquake engineering, the Seismological Society of America (SSA) awarded Archuleta its top honor, the Harry Fielding Reid Medal.

Archuleta taught the very popular course, Geological Catastrophes, which he started with Professor R.V. Fisher following the Loma Prieta earthquake. He was chair of the Department of Earth Science 2008-2011. He is a Distinguished Alumnus of the University of Wyoming and a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union. He retired from active teaching in 2017

TANYA ATWATER, Professor Emeritus

Professor Atwater is a geophysicist and marine geologist who specializes in plate tectonics, particularly the evolution of the San Andreas fault plate boundary. Her educational work has focused on the creation of computer-animated multimedia products and presentations depicting plate tectonic histories. Atwater received her B.A. in geophysics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1965. She is a University of California, San Diego, Alumna, holding a Ph.D.. (1972) in Marine Geophysics from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. She is presently a professor emeritus and Director of the UCSB Educational Multimedia Visualization Center. She was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before joining the faculty at UCSB in 1980. She taught plate tectonics and introductory geology at UCSB and was a staunch advocate and leader of the department's Geo 18 field trip course. Atwater's research has concerned various aspects of tectonics, ranging from the fine details of sea floor spreading processes to global aspects of plate tectonics. She has participated in or led numerous oceanographic expeditions in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, including twelve dives to the deep sea floor in the tiny submersible, Alvin. She is especially well known for her works on the plate tectonic history of western North America, in general, and of the San Andreas fault system, in particular, work that is presently taking her in exciting new directions. Atwater is devoted to science communication, teaching students at all levels in the University, presenting numerous workshops and field trips for K-12 teachers, consulting for the written media, museums, TV and video producers, etc. Atwater serves on various national and international committees and panels. She is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the Geological Society of America and was a co-winner of the Newcomb Cleveland Prize of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was elected to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences in 1997. In 2016 she received the Career Contribution Award from thje Structural Geology Division of the Geological Society of America for "achievements that have led to major advances in the fields of structural geology and tectonics." She also received an Emmy from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for her work on the documentary "Geology Across the American Landscape," specifically she received the 2014 Los Angeles Area Emmy for Instructional Programming for "On Camera Talent." In 2019, the Geological Society of America present Atwater with its highest award - the Penrose Medal - in recognition of her seminal contributions to understanding the relationships among seafloor spreading, continental tectonics, and the San Andreas fault system.

STAN AWRAMIK

Professor Awramik's interests center on understanding the early history of life on Earth. The major focus is on the fossil record during Archean and Proterozoic time, specifically on microbial fossils and stromatolites, which dritters represent the oldest, confident record of life, going back 3.4 billion years. He conducts research on microfossils from several pre-Phanerozoic formations, in particular the Gunflint, Kingston Peak, and Doushantuo Formations. This research involves establishing the microfossil's biogenicity, syngenicity (microfossil is the same age as the primary sediment), taxonomic affinity, and ecological context. These results are then added to a developing picture of microbial evolution on the early Earth. Stan's field studies of stromatolites have taken him to Western Australia, China, Mauritania, Kenya, Canada, and the Bahamas. Most of his recent field work has been in lacustrine beds of the Eocene (~50 Ma) Green River Formation in Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah.

ERNEST L. BICKERDIKE (1908-1987)

As a chemist, Professor Bickerdike offered the first geology course at Santa Barbara State College. He had minored in geology when a student at the University of Southern California. He was chairman of the Department of Physical Sciences in 1959-60 before it was split into Physics, Chemistry, and Geology departments. He was Honorary Marshall of the UCSB campus in 1952, 1960, and 1961.

JAMES R. BOLES, Professor Emeritus

Professor Boles took his B.S. degree in geology at Purdue University (1966), his M.S. in geology at the University of Wyoming (1968), and his Ph.D.. in geology at the University of Otago, New Zealand (1972). From 1973–1975, he was a Research Geologist with the Atlantic Richfield Company in Dallas, Texas. Boles was on the UCSB faculty from 1975 to 2008 when he retired from active service, and was department chairman from 1995 to 1997. Boles has been a consultant for ARCO, Texaco, Phillips, Chevron, Exxon, Shell, Sohio, Amoco, Mobil, City Service, Occidental, Koch Exploration, Venoco, Murphy Oil and Gas, Signal Hill Petroleum, Dames and Moore, Schlumberger, and Intratile. His research centers around clastic diagenesis primarily by detailed petrographic and geochemical techniques. He has studied the timing of diagenetic events in California Tertiary basins relative to hydrocarbon emplacement using isotopic techniques combined with burial history and thermal models of these basins. Boles taught introductory geology, geochemistry, field geology, and sedimentary petrology. He has led many student and societal field trips to Santa Cruz Island. Now he teaches his son how to drive race cars and shoot model cannons.

DOUG BURBANK, Professor Emeritus

Professor Burbank took his B.A. degree from Reed College, with an emphasis in Literature. He took his M.S. from University of Washington in 1979, and then his Ph.D. From Dartmouth College in 1982. He taught at the University of Southern California from 1982 until 1994, then at Penn State from 1997 to 2000, coming to UCSB in 2001 to be the director of the Institute for Crustal Studies. Burbank's research interests are manifold: Tectonic geomorphology; active tectonics; structural and stratigraphic evolution of fold-and-thrust belts and foreland basins; physiographic evolution of mountain ranges; kinematics of folding; basin analysis and modeling; analysis of digital topography; sedimentology; magnetostratigraphy; fission-track dating; Quaternary paleoclimatology; and glacial geology. For the great impact of his research on the relationships among climate, erosion, and tectonics, Burbank was elected into the National Academy of Sciences in 2010. He retired from active service in 2017.

CATHY BUSBY

Professor Busby came from a Midwestern working class family, and was the second person in her entire extended family to attend college. She was identified as clearly different when she taught herself to read at the ninth grade level by the end of first grade, but it was not until her mid-twenties that she found her way through a community college to UC Berkeley, where she put herself through entirely on her own with the help of scholarships, loans, work study, and a UC President's Undergraduate Fellowship. After getting her PhD at Princeton University in 1983, she went straight to a tenure-track position at UC Santa Barbara. Before she received tenure, she gave birth to one daughter, and before attaining Full Professor she gave birth to twin daughters. They are featured in many of the field photos she shows in conferences and classes, and female students, interested in knowing how she managed to combine motherhood with an academic career, often approach her. Busby is a field geologist interested in tectonic reconstructions of dominantly volcanic and sedimentary terrains using lab techniques such as geochronology, geochemistry, petrography, and paleomagnetism. She has published in a wide array of journals on a broad spectrum of topics, including subaerial to deepwater volcanology, sedimentology of active margins, economic geology, tectonophysics, structural geology, petroleum geology, geochronology and geochemistry. Busby removed to UC Davis in 2011.

JORDAN F. CLARK

Professor Clark received his B.S. from the Department of Geology and Geophysics, Yale College, in 1988 and Ph.D.. from the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University in 1995. After completing a DOE Post-doctoral Fellowship at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, he joined the faculty UCSB in 1996. His appointment at UC Santa Barbara is split between the Department of Earth Science and the undergraduate Program of Environmental Studies. The program stresses the application of science and technology in solving current environmental problems, whereas the department examines fundamental processes that shape the Earth's environment. These dual objectives, as represented by his split appointment, form the basis of his scientific curiosity. Clark's research focuses on understanding geochemical, hydrological, and oceanographic interactions that occur near the Earth's surface and the effects of external anthropogenic and climatic forcing on these processes. It is united by a common set of questions: how does transport affect water chemistry and quality, and what are the impacts of climate change and other anthropogenic forcing on water chemistry and flow. In particular his research addresses 1) how does groundwater transport solutes near Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) sites, and what are the effects of multiple flow paths on water quality; 2) why are gases transferred to the water table below spreading ponds at MAR locations without significant interactions with soil air; 3) what is the fate of methane and other gases emitted by natural marine seeps, and how do bubble plume processes enhance the transfer of these gases to the atmosphere; 4) does groundwater contribute significantly to the chemical weathering of mountain catchments and can the weathering signal be used to date baseflow; 5) what are the effects of long-term sea level variations on the flow patterns in coastal aquifers?

JOSEPH C. CLARK

Professor Clark took his doctorate at Stanford and joined the UCSB faculty as Acting Assistant Professor in January 1965. His interests were in stratigraphy, paleontology, and paleoecology. He resigned his UCSB appointment in 1972 and returned to Pennsylvania to manage his family's estate. There he was a faculty member at Indiana University of Pennsylvania from 1972 to 2004. He taught courses in environmental geology and subsurface geology and contributed to the understanding of California fault zone geology and earthquake hazards in central California through his work with the U.S. Geological Survey.

PRESTON CLOUD (1912-1991)

Professor Cloud was born in West Upton, Massachusetts, and grew up in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, where he developed a love for the outdoors. Following his high school graduation, Cloud spent three years in the United States Navy (1930-1933) where he excelled at boxing. In spite of the difficulties of finding employment during the Great Depression, Cloud paid for his own first semester at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. But Ray Bassler, a professor and the curator of paleontology at the National Museum of Natural History noticed Cloud's interest in his work and arranged for him to work at the museum. Cloud later worked with G. Arthur Cooper, a paleontologist and stratigrapher. Under Cooper, Cloud learned much about fossils, especially brachiopods. He worked full-time at the museum and then graduated in 1938, earning a Bachelor of Science degree from The George Washington University. Cooper financially supported Cloud while he was a graduate student at Yale University, where he worked with Carl Dunbar and earned his Ph.D. in 1942. In 1941, Cloud joined the U.S. Geological Survey's WWII mineral exploration program to study manganese deposits in Maine. He became director of the Alabama Bauxite Project the following year. In 1943, he joined the Texas Bureau of Economic Geology and worked on the Ellenburger Project that studied the stratigraphy and sedimentation of the Ellenburger carbonate complex. He accepted a position as professor invertebrate paleontology in Harvard University in 1946, but returned to the USGS in 1949, where he became chief of the Branch of Paleontology and Stratigraphy. In 1961, Cloud accepted a professorship at the University of Minnesota and was appointed chairman of the Department of Geology and Geophysics and head of the School of Earth Sciences.

Cloud came to UCSB from UCLA as Professor Biogeology in 1968 and set up the Biology Clean Laboratory to receive and study rock samples from the Moon in a search for evidence of life. The lab is named in his honor. His active research included work on all phases of life processes as related to the geologic and geochemical record, especially in pre-Phanerozoic time, as well as interrelated evolutions of the biosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere of the developing Earth. He also developed courses concerning geology as related to man and the environment, including Resources and Man, Adventures in Earth History, and Paleobiology.

When Cloud arrived at UCSB, he was one of only two members of the National Academy of Science on the campus. Cloud was a member of the National Academy for 30 years; he was chairman of the Geology Section and occupied positions in its Council and Executive Committee.

Cloud received numerous awards and honors during his illustrious career, including the Penrose Medal from the Geological Society of America in 1976, the Charles Doolittle Walcott Medal from the National Academy of Sciences in 1977, the Paleontological Society Medal, the L.W. Cross Medal from the American Philosophical Society, the A.C. Morrison Award from the New York Academy of Sciences, the Rockefeller Public Service Award, and the Distinguished Service Award and the Gold Medal from the U.S. Department of the Interior.

JON COTTLE

Professor Cottle's main research interests lie in the field of continental tectonics and focus on combining structural analysis, geothermobarometry, igneous and metamorphic petrology with high resolution U(-Th)-Pb isotope geochronology to identify and determine the temporal and spatial scale of processes that modify and/or produce new continental crust. He is particularly interested in the metamorphic, magmatic and tectonic evolution of the Ama Drime Massif and Everest Himalaya in southern Tibet and the TransAntarctic Mountains. Cottle received the Geological Society of America's Early Career Award from its Mineralogy, Geochemistry, Petrology, and Volcanology Division and was named the Mineralogical Society of America's Distinguished Lecturer for 2016-17. Named Spectroscopy's Emerging Leader in Atomic Spectroscopy Award for 2018, presented for "the achievements and aspirations of a talented young atomic spectroscopist who has made strides early in his or her career toward the advancement of atomic spectroscopy techniques or applications."

JOHN CHAMBERS CROWELL (1917-2015)

Professor John Crowell, a graduate in geology in June 1939 from the University of Texas, is a general geologist who has spent most of his professional career on the faculty of the University of California, first for 20 years at UCLA, and subsequently for 21 at UC Santa Barbara. After graduating from UT, Crowell undertook graduate work at UCLA, military service in WWII (as an oceanographic meteorologist he forecast the sea, swell, and surf for the Normandy Invasion and other landing operations), and worked for Shell Oil Company in Ventura as a field geologist. He obtained his MA in oceanographic meteorology from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1946 and his PhD in geology from UCLA in 1947 where he was a student of James Gilluly. Crowell came to UCSB from UCLA in 1967. He served as graduate advisor from 1969 to 1972 and, with Preston Cloud, founded the Environmental Studies Program. He taught courses in structural geology, field studies in tectonics, and graduate seminars in structure and tectonics. Crowell's research contributions are primarily concerned with sedimentation, tectonics, paleoclimatology, and the regional geology of California. In the early and mid 1950s he published several papers dealing with the origin of submarine canyons and turbidity currents. In California and the Alps he studied the characteristics of flysch-type sedimentation. During the 50s and 60s he worked out the displacement history of some of the major strike-slip faults in California, including the San Gabriel and southern stretch of the San Andreas.

His work of the tectonic and sedimentation history along the San Andreas transform belt formed the basis for the contribution about the nature of these processes along similar tectonic belts, such as those in the Caribbean region, southeast Asia, Australia, the North Sea region, and the Alps. His interest in downslope sliding processes, in California as well as in Europe, led him to study the origin of pebbly mudstone and to discriminate between these downslope deposits and those laid down by continental glaciers. In the late 60s this interest led into investigation of the record of ancient glaciations in Europe, North American, and especially on all of the Gondwanan continents in the Southern Hemisphere. He has therefore studied glacial stratigraphic sections on all continents in order to work out the history and causes of continental glaciation through geologic time.

Among his many honors are membership in the US National Academy of Sciences, fellowship in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Penrose Medal and the Career Contribution Award from the Geological Society of America, and an honorary doctorate from the University Louvain, Belgium.

About his teaching career, Bob Norris said: "I believe you are the consummate university faculty member. It is hard for me to imagine a personality better fitted to be a senior professor geology at the University of California (or at any university for that matter!) You have shown us all that it is possible to teach skillfully at all levels in the university and to convey useful information to groups ranging from lower classmen to senior oil company geologists, but I believe it is with graduate students you really perform at your superlative best. For what it is worth, I regard you as perhaps the ablest graduate level instructor it has been my pleasure to know. Every graduate student working under your supervision has gotten his or her full money's worth of intellectual stimulation, conscientious supervision in the office and in the field. Not only that, you have made sure that they have gained experience giving oral presentations of high quality and have been initiated into the fine art of writing research funding proposals. The signal success of many of your graduate students testifies to this most eloquent legacy."

Crowell retired from active university service in 1987.

MICHAEL DENIRO

Professor Deniro took his Ph.D. at Caltech. His research involved study of the processes that cause stable isotopes of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen and silicon to be distributed differentially in biological systems, and applying understanding of those processes to interpretation of stable isotope ratios of fossilized biogenic materials. He now practices law in Santa Barbara.

ZACHARY EILON

Born and raised in London (UK), Professor Eilon completed undergraduate and masters degrees in Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge, focusing on geophysics, geology, and seismology. He moved to the US in 2010 to study at Harvard for one year on a "special studentship" funded by a scholarship from Cambridge. He completed a PhD in geophysics at Columbia University in 2016, conducting his research at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory with focus on continental rifting and mid-ocean ridge structure. Eilon's geophysical specialities are seismology, anelasticity and seismic attenuation, seismic aniostropy, seismic data processing, seismic tomography, tectonophysics, and geophyscial inverse theory. His research involves deployment of dense arrays of seismic instruments to focus on Earth structure at the plate boundary sccale. Recent experiments involved fieldwork in Iceland, Papua New Guinea, Washinton, North Carolina, and Ethiopia. He came to UCSB in 2017.

RICHARD V. FISHER (1928-2002)

Professor Fisher, or 'RV' as he was affectionately known, was born on August 8, 1928, in Whittier, California. He joined the U.S. Army in 1946, was assigned to Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, and then volunteered for duty at Bikini Atoll in the western Pacific. There he witnessed base surges generated by underwater nuclear explosions, making observations that would guide some of his pioneering research on pyroclastic density currents years later. Toward the end of military service in 1947 he married Beverly Taylor, his loving partner for the next 55 years. Four children stemmed from their marriage. Fisher entered Occidental College in 1948, graduated with a B.S. in geology and went on to graduate work at the University of Washington in Seattle (Ph.D., 1957). His doctoral research on volcanic and sedimentary strata southwest of Mount Rainier unraveled the complex mid-Tertiary geologic history in that segment of the Cascade Mountains' volcanic arc and led to his lifelong interest in stratigraphy, pyroclastic volcanism,and volcaniclastic sedimentation. His papers from that period on the classification of pyroclastic and volcaniclastic deposits and rocks helped create and define a rational volcanic terminology still in use today.

In 1955, Fisher accepted a faculty position in geology at the newly established Santa Barbara campus of the University of California. His teaching and research there during 1955-1969, when he rose to full professor, spanned the turbulent period when UCSB evolved from a small liberal arts college to a research university and major campus in the UC system. The doctoral program in geology established at UCSB in 1964 has since produced many well-known volcanologists (and other geologists), many of them mentored by Fisher.

At UCSB Fisher began work on ignimbrites of the John Day Formation in eastern Oregon, laying groundwork for his later insightful studies on pyroclastic density currents. He began his work with Aaron Waters on tuff rings at maar-type volcanoes in the 1960s, first in eastern Oregon and then in the Azores and other localities worldwide. NASA supported this work because some lunar craters resembled maar volcanoes, whose creation on the Moon would imply the presence of water. It was learned during the Apollo program that the lunar craters were of meteorite-impact (not hydrovolcanic) origin, but the maar research led to early ideas about terrestrial explosive hydrovolcanism by R.V., his students, and colleagues. Volcanic "base surges" arising from large-scale explosive eruptions where rising hot magma interacted with water or wet sediments—much like base surges produced by the underwater nuclear explosions witnessed by Fisher at Bikini Atoll in 1946—were shown to be responsible. Those ideas, in turn, led to his research into all types of pyroclastic density currents (PDCs), many associated with caldera-forming pyroclastic flows. His research on the May 18, 1980 blast deposits at Mount St. Helens and elsewhere helped to resolve controversy regarding dense-flow versus dilute, turbulent-flow models for PDCs. His field studies in the United States, Italy, Germany, France, Argentina, Portugal, Spain, Mexico, and China, including team efforts with his graduate students and other colleagues, have addressed and clarified those and other important problems of explosive volcanism.

Fisher enjoyed writing, and his professional output was enormous. This includes more than 80 articles in professional journals and related scientific publications. His first book, Pyroclastic Rocks (Fisher & Schmincke, 1984) was and remains the definitive work on that topic. His next two books, Volcanoes - Crucibles of Change (Fisher, Heiken, & Hulin, 1997) and his autobiography Out of the Crater - Chronicles of a Volcanologist (Princeton University Press, 1999), both directed toward educating the public, have enjoyed great success.

Fisher was also a distinguished teacher, especially of graduate students, and he launched many successful careers. He was a strong advocate for the proposition that the best research scholars make the best teachers and he lived up to that standard. He had the uncanny ability to challenge students and get them enthused, yet doing so in an easy, friendly, laid-back way. More than most, he inspired long-lasting loyalties.

Administratively, Fisher served UCSB well. Three times he chaired the Department of Geological Sciences (1969-73, 1979-80, and 1983-84) and he served several times as its graduate advisor and as director of the Summer Field Camp. He served also as assistant to the chancellor for Academic Planning (1972-73). Outside the University he was a consultant to NASA and a member of many national and international scientific boards.

Important honors came his way. He received Senior Scientist Awards (1980-81, 1988-89) from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany, a prestigious scientific recognition. For research achievements he won the N.L. Bowen Award of the American Geophysical Union (1985), its highest award for research in volcanology. This was followed (1997) by the Thorarinsson Medal, the highest honor of the International Association of Volcanologists (IAVCEI).

MIKE FULLER

Professor Fuller received his B.A. and PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1958 and 1961, respectively. He then took a post-doctoral position at Scripps Institution of Oceanography for a year and then moved to Pittsburgh to Gulf Research and Development Laboratory for about two and a half years. At this time Professor Takesi Nagata was starting a paleomagnetism group at the University Pittsburgh's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. Fuller joined Nagata and Kobayashi there in 1965. After Professor Koybashi returned to Japan, Fuller ran the group with Nagata until 1974 when he came to UCSB. Fuller's research interests at UCSB were in the area of magnetism and its applications to geology, lunar sciences, and biomagnetism. The particular focus areas were in the processes of magnetization of rocks and the behavior of their constituent magnetic minerals, paleomagnetic records of secular variation and field reversals, lunar magnetism, paleomagnetism and tectonics, especially in China and southeast Asia. Fuller retired from UCSB and then joined the faculty at the University of Hawaii.

PHIL GANS

Professor Gans came to UCSB in 1988 with a PhD from Stanford University. His interests lie in the general fields of structural geology and tectonics and are focused on deformational and thermal processes within the continental lithosphere. His research is mainly in the field of extensional tectonics and is focused on exactly how continents rift and the relationship between extension and magmatism. Gans makes most of his observations and draws much of his scientific inspiration from field-based investigations. His research projects generally involve detailed geologic mapping of critical areas followed by appropriate laboratory measurements (e.g., radiometric dating, geochemical analyses) and numerical modeling in order to understand the structural and/or thermal process under study. Recent work has focused on the Cenozoic evolution of the Basin and Range province of the western U.S. and on the origin of Cretaceous gneiss domes in Arctic Alaska and northeast Russia. Current and future studies will expand on these themes and will focus on the evolution of the Mexican Basin and Range province and the structural evolution of gneiss domes on the Tibetan plateau.

ROBERT GARRISON, Professor Emeritus

Professor Garrison came to UCSB in fall 1965 as a Lecturer in Geology. His undergraduate training was at Stanford, graduate work at Innsbruck and Princeton, and post-doctoral research at Princeton. His specialties were carbonate petrology and sedimentary basin analysis. While at UCSB his research involved electron-microscopic studies of fossils and textural features of limestone from the Franciscan Formation in California, and of nannoplankton from Pacific Northwest limestone. He also held a year-long teaching appointment at the University of British Columbia before joining the faculty at University of California, Santa Cruz in 1968, where he is presently Professor Emeritus of Marine Oceanography, and Adjunct Professor, Moss Landing Marine Laboratories.

Conrad D. Gebelein (1945-1978)

(from CALISPHERE, 8 December 2008)

The son and grandson of prominent musicians closely associated with Johns Hopkins University, Professor Gebelein received a bachelor's degree in biology-biochemistry and a master's degree in biological oceanography from Johns Hopkins. He went for the Ph.D.. degree at Brown University, where his dissertation study of modern carbonate tidal flat environments on Cape Sable, south Florida, was to become a modern classic. At the time of his death, he had already published an impressive sequence of major contributions to the field of biogeology. Through his analytical studies and comparisons of modern and ancient marine environments, he became a major contributor to the understanding of the enigmatic sedimentary structures known as stromatolites. In large part, his efforts have transformed them from mere geologic curiosities into keys to understand early paleoenvironments. He had a gift for identifying significant problems, going to their centers, and finding solutions. In 1970 Gebelein began his study of the sedimentology and stratigraphy of the southwest Andros tidal flats, a program that was still expanding at the time of his death. He even organized an Institute for Marine Sciences to pursue his goal of understanding the geochemistry and diagenesis of tidal flat, reef, and oolite shoal environments, and the biogeology of sponge and bryozoan bioherms in the Great Bahama Bank. This work remains to be completed, but he gave it great momentum in constructive directions.

His professional appointments advanced from instructor and assistant professor at the State University of New York at Stonybrook, to assistant director of the Bermuda Biological Station, and then, in 1974, to Associate Professor of Geology at UC, Santa Barbara.

Conrad Gebelein was only thirty-two and in apparently superb health. His death from natural causes on the night of February 28 in Nicolls Town, Andros Island, Bahamas was a great shock and a great loss. He was buried at sea in the Tongue of the Ocean off Andros, according to his own earlier expressed wish. The loss of a scholar of such promise, in the full vigor of a career well launched, was a staggering blow to his colleagues, his students and his science.

BRADLEY R. HACKER

Professor Hacker took his B.S. with honors (1982) and M.S. (1984) at UC Davis and Ph.D. (1988) at UCLA. He held postdoctoral and research positions at Stanford University from 1989 to 1996 in petrology, geochronology, and structural geology before joining the UCSB faculty in 1996. Prior to his academic endeavors, Hacker was a programmer, technical writer, and editor for Apple Computer (1978-1984). Hacker works on theoretical and field studies of the rates of phase changes and tectonics. Fieldwork emphasizes the integration of geochronology, petrology, and structural geology. Current work in China and Norway on the exhumation histories of ultrahigh-pressure rocks builds on previous work on crustal extension and ophiolite emplacement in Oman, Tibet, and the western US. Hacker's current theoretical modeling focuses on the role of phase transformations in intermediate-depth earthquakes. He developed a new synthesis of the fate of water in the deep Earth, showing that water, in the form of hydrous minerals in terrigenous sediments, altered volcanic rocks, and lower crustal rocks, is transported downward into the deep Earth in variable amounts along subduction zones. At UCSB Hacker teaches courses in metamorphic petrology and intermediate field geology. He was elected to Fellowship in the American Geophysical Union in 2010.

RACHEL M. HAYMON, Professor Emeritus

Professor Haymon took her B.A. in geology at Rice University in 1976, followed by her Ph.D. in marine geology and geochemistry in 1982 at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. She joined the Earth Science Department in 1992, teaching courses in Oceanography, Mineralogy, field studies in Marine Geochemistry, and Submarine Hydrothermal Systems. Her research explores and characterizes hydrothermal systems along the global Mid-Ocean Ridge as well as associated hydrothermal mineralization to determine interrelationships among hydrothermal and other (magmatic, tectonic, biological) ridge crest features/processes. She investigates the nature, time-scales, and causes of spatial and temporal variability in ridge crest hydrothermal systems by conducting both geologic mapping studies and geochemical/ petrologic studies. Rachel was part of the team that first found deep-sea "black smoker" hot springs on the volcanic mid-ocean ridge. At sea and in ophiolites, Haymon maps, images, and samples fine-scale geologic and hydrothermal features over entire ridge segments. The seagoing mapping and imaging surveys are done using deep-towed camera/sonar systems and deep-diving submersibles. Data acquisition is followed by computerized image analysis and spatial analysis. Haymon's research is interdisciplinary and problem-oriented, and her students use a wide range of tools and creative approaches to tackle unsolved mysteries of submarine magma/hydrothermal systems, mid-ocean ridges, and mineral/microbe interactions. Haymon is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America; a co-recipient of the Newcomb-Cleveland Prize from Science Magazine; and a recipient of the Hans-Pettersson Bronze Medal from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Haymon became emerita July 2010. While retiring from active teaching she continues her research on the workings of mid-ocean spreading centers especially with respect to their hydrothermal systems. Currently she is co-PI with Professor Robin Matoza onn a project in the Cascades to develop a volcanic mudslide (lahar) detection system that can be used to warn threatened populations.

MATTHEW JACKSON

Professor Jackson is an igneous petrologist and geochemist who studies the composition and early evolution of the Earth.

He received his B.S. degree at Yale University in 2001 and took his Ph.D. at MIT in 2008. He came to UCSB in 2013 after three years as assistant professor at Boston University. He was a Fulbright Fellow in Iceland, 2001-2002 and held a Carnegie Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, 2008-2009. His awards include the Clarke Medal from the Geochemical Society in 2014, the Kuno Award from the American Geophysical Union (Volcanology, Geochemistry, Petrology) in 2014, and the Macelwane Medal also from the American Geophysical Union in 2015. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union since 2015.

Jackson was denoted the “Most Inspirational Teacher” by Graduate Students of the Earth Science Department in 2016.

CLIFFORD HOPSON, Professor Emeritus

Professor Hopson grew up in Marin County, California, known for its numerous outcrops of the Franciscan Formation that formed one of the research cornerstones of his career. He received his BA at Stanford in 1951, Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1955, and became an assistant professor there in the same year. He came to UCSB as Associate Professor of Geology in September 1964. Hopson is a petrologist interested in igneous and metamorphic rocks and related aspects of geochemistry and geochronology. His enthusiasm and well-organized courses did much to get the department's graduate program off to an excellent start. Much of his research was on the granitic and metamorphic rocks of the northern Cascades in Washington, the geology of Mt. St. Helens before it erupted in 1980, and on ophiolites in the California Coast Ranges and in Oman.

CHEN JI

Professor Ji is an earthquake seismologist who took his B.S. degree at Peking University in 1991, his M.S at the Institute of Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Science, in 1994, and his PhD. at Caltech in 2002. His research efforts focus on exploring the physical processes of large earthquakes with various modern geophysical observations, such as broadband seismograms, high-rate GPS, and radar interferometry. Current work include developing a real-time finite fault inversion system to quickly evaluate the catastrophic tragedies caused by large shallow earthquakes globally, and determination of the lateral variations of crustal structures using seismic waveform modeling techniques. He teaches geophysics and seismology at UCSB where he has been since 2003.

DAN KARIG

Professor Karig took his PhD at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in marine tectonics and came to UCSB in 1971 but left for Cornell University in 1973. His research focused on island arc systems and theoretical aspects of plate tectonics. He taught geophysics, marine tectonics, and helped the Environmental Studies Program with a course called Geological Problems of the Human Environment.

EDWARD A. KELLER

Professor Keller took his B.S. in math and B.A. in geology at Cal State Fresno. He took his M.S. at UC Davis (1969) and Ph.D.. at Purdue University in geology (1973). He taught geomorphology, environmental studies, and Earth science for three years at University of North Carolina before coming to UCSB in 1977, where he has a split appointment between Earth Science and the Environmental Studies Program. Keller's research in active tectonics has centered on the western Transverse Ranges of southern California through geomorphologic investigations. The objectives of that research are to: 1) Establish the late Pleistocene through Holocene chronology; 2) Estimate rates of recent tectonic activity; 3) Determine the basic tectonic framework of the western Transverse Ranges; 4) Provide a better understanding of mountain-building processes in active fold-and-thrust belts; 5) Understand fault and fold growth, particularly lateral propagation and 6) Understand the earthquake hazard of the Santa Barbara area. His hydrologic studies focus on: 1) Basic river processes; 2) The role of wildfire and the recurrence intervals of high magnitude flood deposits and debris flow deposits; 3) Role of large woody debris on channel form and process; 4) Environmental effects of channelization; and 5) River restoration and management.

JAMES P. KENNETT, Professor Emeritus

Professor Kennett was born and received his early education in Wellington, New Zealand. The wonderful geologic exposures of his native country, especially the Nelson area where his grandparents farmed, fostered a boyhood interest in geology. He received B.S. and Ph. D. degrees at Victoria University of Wellington where he began to meld his interests in Cenozoic stratigraphy, micropaleontology and the Antarctic with marine geology. Henry Pantin from the New Zealand Oceanographic Institute convinced Kennett about the importance of the oceans for understanding global geology. At that time the United States was clearly well ahead in this frontier research. For this reason he and his wife Diana emigrated to the United States in 1966 largely to participate in the post Sputnik excitement and opportunities in science of the time. Jim had a postdoctoral fellowship with Orville Bandy at the University of Southern California where he continued working on Antarctic paleoclimatic history. He began teaching at Florida State University in Tallahassee – a career spanning almost five decades of research and teaching at FSU, the Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island and University of California Santa Barbara. The academic environment at the Graduate School in Rhode Island for 17 years was critical in advancing his experience in oceanography and marine geology. Kennett's work in marine geology and paleoceanography since the middle 1960s contributed toward comprehensive understanding of major paleoceanographic and biotic changes that shaped the Cenozoic Era and its stratigraphic record, and their underlying causes. Because of these contributions, Kennett is considered a pioneer in developing

paleoceanography as a new field and was founding editor of Paleoceanography.

In 1987, Jim moved with Diana to the University of California Santa Barbara as Director of the Marine Science Institute, serving for 10 years and also joining the Geology Department as Professor. On arrival at UCSB he initiated two research projects near the campus but with potential global implications. The first involved drilling and piston coring sediments in Santa Barbara Basin to better understand Quaternary climate change and its causes. The second was to push this record back through time using the locally uplifted and exposed Cenozoic sediments, especially the Miocene Monterey Formation. The 600-meter-deep Santa Barbara Basin is remarkable in containing a fine stratigraphic record with layers that can be divided as closely as single years, a phenomenon equivalent to tree rings in the ocean. For millions of years this region has been a highly sensitive recorder of climate change influenced by two competing currents, the cold California Current from the north and the warmer Countercurrent from the south. An abundance of microfossils adds to the record's quality.

In the early 1990s, the Ocean Drilling Program, successor to the Deep Sea Drilling Project, drilled a site in the basin, providing a gold mine of paleoclimatic information for last ice age. This provided Kennett and colleagues with a picture of surprisingly abrupt climate and oceanic changes, in turn raising the tantalizing question as to their triggering and feedback mechanisms. Thus we now know that the Earth's climate is highly prone to abrupt and major change, and therefore we need to be careful how we manage our planet that can be decidedly fickle in its behavior.

While at UCSB Kennett taught a range of courses about oceanography, Antarctica, geological oceanography, Earth System History, stratigraphy, paleoceanography and micropaleontology. He has been blessed with association of many wonderful graduate and undergraduate students and senior colleagues at UCSB and earlier locales who helped discover much about how our Earth has operated in its past.

Jim Kennett formally retired from teaching and administration in 2006 with the express purpose of actively focusing on various research projects.

DAVID LEA

Professor Lea was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which explains why he is a diehard Phillies fan. He took his B.S. magna cum laude in geology (honors) at Haverford College, and then his Ph.D. at Woods Hole (MIT) in 1990. Lea is Professor of Earth Science and member of the Marine Science Institute at UCSB where he has been a faculty member since 1989. His research interests include climate change, global warming, climate evolution during the Ice Ages, marine geochemistry and the carbon cycle. Lea has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago and University of Cambridge, UK. His awards include the UCSB Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award (2001), a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (2002-03), a Leverhulme Visiting Professorship, a Clare Hall Visiting Fellowship (both 2002-03, Cambridge, UK), the American Geophysical Union Cesare Emiliani Lectureship (2007), and a Leopold Leadership Fellowship (2009). He chaired UCSB's 2007 Global Warming-Science and Society Event Series, which drew over 3000 attendees. Lea was named a Jefferson Science Fellow for 2010-2011.

LORRAINE LISIECKI

Professor Lisiecki took her B.S. at MIT in 1999, and then took M.Sc. degrees at both MIT (2000) and Brown University (2003), and then her Ph.D. at Brown in 2005. She was appointed to the faculty at UCSB in 2008 where she teaches graduate seminars in paleoclimatology. Her research focuses on computational approaches to the interpretation of paleoclimate records, because she believes that the integrated analysis of widely distributed paleoclimate records will yield important information about the climate system that cannot be obtained by studying these records individually. Liseicki is particularly interested in the evolution of Plio-Pleistocene climate as it relates to Milankovitch forcing, 100-kyr glacial cycles, and deep-ocean circulation. She also develops and distributes software related to age model development and stratigraphy, using such tools as stratigraphic correlation, simple physical models, dynamic programming, and mathematical tools, including time series analysis, principal component analysis, and computational probability and statistics. Lisiecki received the 2008 Subaru Outstanding Woman in Science Award.

BRUCE P. LUYENDYK, Professor Emeritus

Luyendyk is Professor of Marine Geophysics at UCSB, past chair of the Department of Geological Sciences (1997-2003; now Earth Science) and founding director of the Institute for Crustal Studies (ICS), which he directed from 1987 to 1997. He has been Associate Dean of Science at UCSB since 2005. Luyendyk has been on the faculty at UCSB since 1973. He holds a Ph.D. from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and was on the scientific staff of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution for four years prior to coming to UCSB. His research specialties include marine geology and plate tectonics. Professor Luyendyk has been active in Antarctic research since 1989, having made six expeditions to Marie Byrd Land and the Ross Sea along the Pacific coast of Antarctica to study climate history and the formation of mountain ranges. In 1994, along with former student Scott Hornafius, he began an effort that has developed into a major research study of the Coal Oil Point marine hydrocarbon seeps offshore from the UCSB campus. He and his students were the first to recognize the ninety-degree clockwise rotation of the Transverse Ranges and other regions of southern California, which they described in a series of publications from 1979 through 2001. In 1979 Luyendyk, along with Professors Atwater, Haymon, and Macdonald, were members of the expedition that discovered the deep-sea hot vents on the East Pacific Rise with the submersible ALVIN. Professor Luyendyk has taught courses in geophysics, on Antarctica, and most recently on global petroleum resources. He has been an active member of the Academic Senate serving on Graduate Council, and the Council on Planning and Budget where he was chair of the space sub-committee.

Luyendyk has received awards from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Navy, and shared the 1980 Newcomb Cleveland Prize of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America and also a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union. He retired from active teaching and administration in 2010. He was honored in 2016 with a mountain named after him - Mount Luyendyk in Antarctica's remote Fosdick Mountains, where he conducted field research. The U.S. Board on Geographic Names noted "his cumulative research, findings, and publications have significantly increased scientific knowledge in Antarctica"

KEN C. MACDONALD, Professor Emeritus

Born beneath the Golden Gate at the Presidio in San Francisco in 1947, Professor Macdonald went to elementary, junior high and high schools in San Francisco area; all three located on active traces of the San Andreas fault system (Hayward fault). As an undergraduate Regents Scholar at U.C. Berkeley in Engineering Sciences during the tumultuous sixties [1966-1970], he took a weekend field geology course as an elective. The visiting professor taught the course in such a way that the students discussed and saw at first hand the effects of plate tectonics in the Franciscan complex in the mornings, and sampled the fine wines of Napa and Sonoma counties in the afternoons. This experience combined with his love of the ocean and scuba diving diverted his interests away from considerations of graduate work in engineering, medicine, or business to oceanography. Armed with an NSF graduate fellowship, Macdonald decided to pursue graduate studies in marine geophysics in the then new MIT-Woods Hole Joint Program in Oceanography. His wanderlust found him on many expeditions, including seagoing voyages to Australia, New Guinea, Vanuatu, Samoa, Tahiti, Galapagos, the Red Sea and the Azores. For his dissertation he participated in a deep-tow expedition to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge led by Bruce Luyendyk (then at Woods Hole) and Fred Spiess (at Scripps). Since he was working with deep-tow data from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, he found himself wintering in La Jolla to work with Fred Spiess and Bob Parker, thus escaping the hellish winters on Cape Cod. The summers were great because he lived on a cabin cruiser he purchased for $400; it was anchored 1/2 mile south of Woods Hole in a veritable floating village of seafarers.

Macdonald was prepared to continue his summers on Cape Cod, winters in La Jolla indefinitely, but, alas, the dean at MIT was not so prepared especially once he noticed Macdonald had been without a PhD advisor for two years; Luyendyk, his advisor, had left Woods Hole for UCSB and Atwater had just arrived at MIT, in time to sign off on his dissertation.

Frantically trying to finish his PhD in the three months before funding ran out, Macdonald had failed to take time to look for a job. He was saved by the generosity of Cecil Green (founder of Texas Instruments) who funded his first post-Ph.D.. job as Green Scholar at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics in 1975 where he could continue his association with Scripps and U.C. He had four very fruitful and enjoyable years at Scripps before U.C. Santa Barbara lured him away with an offer of a tenured faculty position in 1979. He was concerned that seagoing geophysics at UCSB might be difficult because UCSB lacked a ship, but he found that his colleagues at Scripps and Woods Hole were open to continued collaboration. He also forged a fruitful and fun-filled research partnership with his good friend Jeff Fox at University of Rhode Island, a world's expert on oceanic transform faults. As a result, the 30 years at UCSB were rich with exciting research opportunities and excellent graduate students. In 1984 he married former Scripps graduate student, Rachel Haymon, who was Professor at UCSB where Macdonald is now Professor Emeritus.

Macdonald chaired the Graduate Admissions Committee for nearly 20 years trying to enlarge and invigorate the department's graduate program. He taught the large Introduction to Oceanography class for about 20 years; also Introduction to Geophysics, Marine Geophysics and Earth System Science. He taught the first seagoing field course, "Field Studies in Marine Geophysics" in 1981 and continued that effort for over 20 years. Typically 10-15 undergraduates and 3-6 graduate students joined him on seagoing expeditions (funded by National Science Foundation or Office of Naval Research) for 1-2 months as a part of this 12 unit course. He was active in the Marine Sciences Institute and worked to recruit its new director at that time, Jim Kennett. Macdonald was also the first sommelier for the departmental wine collection (donated by alumus Rich Migues), a task he reluctantly gave up when he retired in 2007.

Over the last 35 years Macdonald's research focused primarily on the mid-ocean ridge, the most active geologic feature on the planet, using available geophysical or geologic tools to study the tectonics of this complex system. He participated in some of the first fine-scale explorations of the ridge, using swath-mapping sonars, remotely controlled vehicles and manned-submersibles. He contributed to several important discoveries and advances in understanding ocean ridge systems including: the fundamental segmentation of mid-ocean ridges and the significance of ridge-axis discontinuities with overlapping spreading centers and propagating rifts; the processes responsible for the creation and deformation of oceanic crust particularly through the study of marine magnetic anomalies and quantitative geomorphology; and the importance of hydrothermal vent systems to the heat balance of the ridge. Macdonald was co-chief scientist [with Fred Spiess] of the expedition that discovered the first "black smoker" vents on the East Pacific Rise, sharing the 1980 Newcomb-Cleveland Medal and Prize of American Association for the Advancement of Science for that discovery. He made over 50 dives in the submersible ALVIN to depths exceeding 8,000 feet.

In retrospect Macdonald sees that his living condition is embedded in plate tectonics. He continues to live on the same transform plate boundary system on which he was born and raised [the San Andreas], he spends summers in a cabin over a major subduction zone [in the Cascade Mountains], and he works on divergent plate boundaries, the mid-ocean ridges.

In his new status as Professor Emeritus, Macdonald continues to conduct research on mid-ocean ridges and lectures on occasion, but more time has been devoted to his other passions: windsurfing, fly-fishing, and supporting environmental organizations.

FRANCIS A. MACDONALD

Macdonald's research combines the interaction of tectonics, climate, and biological evolution through the Earth's history. His work begins with geological mapping and uses stratigraphic analysis, isotope geochemistry, geochronology, paleomagnetism, and paleontology to reconstruct paleoenvironments and tectonic histories. Recent projects have focused on the initiation and duration of Snowball Earth events, the chemical evolution of the ocean leading up to the Cambrian explosion, and the Neoproterozoic to Paleozoic tectonic evolution of North American and Asia. He was awarded Harvard University's Star Family Prize for Excellence in Advising in 2012, the Geological Society of America's Young Scientist Award (Donath Medal) in 2014, and the American Geophysical Union's James B. Macelwane Medal in 2019 for early career scientists. He holds a B.S. degree in geology from Caltech and a Ph.D. in geology from Harvard University.

KEITH MACDONALD

Professor Macdonald received his Geology B.Sc. from University College, London (1961) and his Ph.D. from Scripps Institution of Oeanography (1967). He came to UCSB in 1968 after completing a post-doc at Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History. His research interests bridged paleobiology and present-day shallow marine sedimentary environments. He taught a popluar Introduction to Oceanography course, paleontology and paleoecology classes, and obtain NSF support for a Non-Parametric Statistics course. His NSF grant to study biogenic structures in the Santa Barbara Basin funded the Department's first purchase of x-ray equipment to study sediment slabs. He was also active in the study of newly protected 'wetland' habitats and supported both geology and biology students studying Goleta and Carpinteria marshes. Dr. Macdonald left UCSB in 1976 to pursue interdisciplinary research in the private sector. He headed NOAA's data synthesis team for the Alaska Outer Continental Shelf Environmental Assessment Program; studied circulation and shelf-edge coral hardground communities along Florida's Gulf Coast; and multidisciplinary studies of fjordal systems near Juneau, Alaska. His coastal wetlands studies contributed to protection and enhancement of Bolsa Chica wetlands, Batiquitos Lagoon, and South San Diego Bay.   Dedicated to the memory of Bob Norris, colleague, mentor, and friend.

YORK MANDRA (1925-2020)

Professor York Mandra taught the department's Summer Session courses in introductory geology and energy and environment for many years. York was a teacher of extraordinary dedication and skill, with a remarkable ability to motivate students. During the 1960s the Geology Department always hired a professor from another school to teach an introductory Summer Session course on geology, and the policy was to hire a different person each summer to teach this course, that is, up until about 1970 when York Mandra first came here to teach it. His performance was so outstanding that the department changed its policy, bringing Mandra back to teach the summer course for the next 20 years or so. While teaching a well-balanced general course, he also focused on Earth Science topics of then-current national interest, such as energy and the environment, and commonly brought outside experts in to lecture or hold discussions on those special topics. Although micropaleontology was Mandra's research specialty, one of the strengths of his teaching was that he had a remarkably broad grasp across the field of Earth Science. Mandra took his B.A. (physics) and M.A. degrees at UC Berkeley and his PhD. at Stanford University. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Glascow and Universite d'Aix-Marseille. He was on the San Francisco State University faculty from 1954 to 2005 where he taught courses in micropaleontology and Societal Problems of Energy. In 1977 Professor Mandra was the recipient of the Robert Wallace Award that is presented occasionally by the Far Western Section of the American Geological Institute for sustained excellence in Earth Sciences teaching and sustained exceptional service to the Earth Science teaching profession. York received the Neil Miner Award in 1984 for exceptional contributions to the simulation of Earth Sciences. He was a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences and of the Geological Society of America. Mandra was a staunch friend and avid booster of the UCSB Geology Department, its faculty, and students. He retired from active university service in 2004.

JAMES M. MATTINSON , Professor Emeritus

Professor Mattinson took his B.A. and Ph.D. (1970) in geology at UCSB where, among many other awards and honors, he was a Woodhouse Scholar. He joined the UCSB faculty as an assistant professor in 1977 after having been a post-doctoral researcher at the Geophysical Laboratory in Washington D.C. where he developed new zircon U-Pb analytical techniques. His research focuses on two major areas of isotope geology: application of geochronology and radiogenic isotope tracer studies to problems in tectonics and igneous and metamorphic petrology; and advancement of understanding of the commonly complex behavior of the U-Pb system in zircon, one of the premier geochronology minerals. Mattinson has provided technological breakthroughs in zircon dating that are now being employed by the best labs around the world. Using clever combinations of annealing zircon grains and chemical dissolution, Mattinson discovered ways to reduce the sources of error in zircon ages. His techniques result in radiometric ages that have much, much smaller uncertainties than previously possible. His greatest success was the invention of the "chemical abrasion" technique, which greatly improved the precision and accuracy of zircon dates, and which is now the standard technique in nearly all U-Pb zircon labs world-wide. He applied his U-Pb zircon geochronology on igneous rocks from Alaska to Antarctica. Mattinson taught the gamut of courses over the years, including introductory geology, mineralogy, igneous petrology, geochemistry, summer field geology, and graduate courses in geochronology.  He was Department Chair for a total of eight years - three in the early 1990s and five in the mid-2000s. He retired from active university service in 2009.

ROBIN MATOZA

Professor Matoza and his student associates use seismic and infrasonic waves to investigate how volcanoes work with application in monitoring and mitigating volcanic hazards. They study magmatic, hydrothermal, and faulting processes occurring within and around volcanoes, as well as the mechanisms and dynamics of explosive eruptions and shallow volcanic degassing. Robin grew up in Liverpool, England, received his M.Geophysics at Leeds University (UK) in 2004. During 2002-2003 he was an undergraduate exchange student here at UCSB where he met his future wife, Emily. He was a graduate student at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics (IGPP) at Scripps Institution of Oceanography where he earned his Ph.D. in 2009. His dissertation concerned the 2004-2008 eruption of Mt. St. Helens as well as those of volcanoes Kilauea in Hawaii and Tungurahua in Ecuador. Thereafter, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the French Commission for Atomic and Alternative Energies, a major center for infrasound research outside Paris. There he studied the long-range atmospheric propagation of infrasound from explosive eruptions, demonstrating the feasibility of acoustic early warning systems of remote explosive volcanism for aviation safety. Robin returned to IGPP in 2011 as a Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Post-doctoral Scholar (2011-2014) and Assistant Project Scientist (2014-2015). He came to UCSB in 2015.

KRISTIN MORELL

Professor Morell arrived at UCSB in 2017 after an assistant professorship at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada (2014-2017). She studies how mountains are built and destroyed by interactions between plate tectonics and Earth-surface processes. Her research in tectonic geomorphology and active tectonics has taken her to the Himalayas, Central America, and Cascadia on southern Vancouver Island. She and her research colleagues use a combination of methods in field geology, river longitudinal profile analysis, low temperature thermochronology, bare earth lidar data, and erosion rate estimation. She has discovered new active faults in southern British Columbia that were previously considered inactive since Eocene time. Kristin was born in Wilmington, Delaware, but her childhood was spent in such places as Tampico, Mexico, and rural Tennessee. Shel received her BA with honors from Wellesley College in 2004, her M.Sc. in 2006 from Pennsylvania State University, and her Ph.D also from Penn State in 2011. She was a Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne, Australia, 2011-2013.

BRUCE NOLF

Among other teaching assignments, Bruce Nolf taught the department's first few summer field courses with Don Weaver. Shortly afterward he took a position at Central Oregon Community College in Bend, Oregon, where he continued his studies of volcanology.

ROBERT M. NORRIS (1921-2012)

Professor Norris was born in Los Angeles in 1921 when it was smaller than San Diego or San Jose are today. His early education was in the Los Angeles public schools. In the depths of the depression the family moved to the mostly rural San Fernando Valley, and that fall he entered UCLA as a chemistry major. Providentially between semesters in winter break in 1940, Bob and a high school friend went on a trip led by Bob Webb to the pegmatite quarries in San Diego County and thence to the Salton basin. This was a life-changing experience, so that once back at UCLA, he wasted little time in changing majors. By 1942 the draft was about to convert Bob into a soldier, so he enlisted in a Navy Officers training program instead and was instructed to stay at UCLA until he had earned his degree, awarded in October 1943. Naval duty was in the Pacific aboard a small, but sea-going landing craft ultimately involved in the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Before he was discharged, Bob had some duty in Okinawa, Taiwan, and mainland China. Like many of his former UCLA classmates, Bob returned to UCLA for a Masters degree. His was supervised by M.N. Bramlette and involved mapping an area south of Lompoc. Another fortuitous event occurred when department chairman James Gilluly stopped Bob in the hallway and offered him a teaching assistantship. Although teaching had never entered his mind, experience as a TA, which included occasional substitute lecturing for Professor U.S. Grant IV, settled the question. Conversations with Grant and Webb made it clear that the PhD degree was necessary for a position in a 4-year college, and Grant suggested Scripps where the field of marine geology was just getting started. To hedge his bets a bit, Bob completed course work for a junior college teaching credential before going off to La Jolla to work under the supervision of Francis P. Shepard.

The PhD degree was awarded in June 1951 and shortly thereafter, Bob had interviews at Santa Barbara. Although he was chosen among his competitors (Jack McGill and Warren Hamilton) for a new position, Berkeley refused to authorize his appointment at that time because the post-war bulge in enrollment had passed.

Fortunately, Francis Shepard had just been awarded a big American Petroleum Institute grant to study recent sedimentation on the Gulf Coast at two locations: the Mississippi delta and the barrier islands and shallow bays near Rockport, Texas. Shepard needed two party chiefs and Bob was chosen for the Rockport area and led two field teams, one in the summer of 1951 and the other in the winter of 1952. Bob and his new wife, Ginny, had a honeymoon of sorts in Texas during the winter season.

During spring, 1952, Bob Webb, having transferred from UCLA to UCSB, went on sabbatical leave to Washington, DC. Bob replaced him as a member of a two-man geology section in the Department of Physical Science, the other member being C. Douglas Woodhouse. Once the geology "unit" became the Department of Geology, Bob became its first chairman from 1960 to 1964. During his long UCSB career, Bob taught the introductory physical geology course, geomorphology, geology of California, and the spring field mapping class in Tick Canyon. The Robert M. Norris Prize in Field Geology honors his teaching efforts in that course. He also organized and taught the first University of California course in marine geology outside of Scripps. This course led his student, Bob Ballard, discoverer of the "Titanic", to a career in marine exploration. From 1970 to 1975, Bob was Director of the Santa Cruz Island Field Station when all of that island, except its eastern end, became part of the University of California's Natural Reserve System. In 1981, Bob received the Neil Miner Award from the National Association of Geology Teachers for "exceptional stimulation of interest in the geologic sciences", the highest award conferred by that organization. Also in 1981 he was the recipient of the Robert Wallace Webb Award that is presented occasionally by the Far Western Section of the American Geological Institute for sustained excellence of Earth Sciences teaching and sustained exceptional service to the Earth Science teaching profession. His research centered around geomorphology, especially sand dunes and shoreline erosion problems. While on sabbatical at the New Zealand Oceanographic Institute, he led three cruises that investigated Holocene shelf sedimentation. He was also a member of the International Geophysical Year "Downwind Expedition" off the west coast of South America (1957-58), including Easter Island.

BRIAN PATRICK

Professor Patrick joined the UCSB faculty in 1991 as a metamorphic petrologist with a PhD from the University of Washington. He returned to that state in 1993.

SUSANNAH PORTER

Professor Porter was exposed to geology at an early age. Her father, Stephen Porter, studies Quaternary climate change, and as a teenager she accompanied him as a field assistant to the Big Island of Hawaii and to the Qinghai Plateau and Inner Mongolia regions of China. Susannah received her bachelor's degree in mathematics from Yale University in 1995 and her Ph.D. at Harvard University in 2002, where she studied paleontology with Professor Andrew Knoll. After Harvard, Susannah completed a one-year NASA Astrobiology Post-Doctoral Fellowship at UCLA, and started at UCSB in 2003. Susannah's research focuses on the early fossil record of animals and their protistan relatives. She has worked on problems relating to the early evolution of skeletal biomineralization, the influence of "snowball Earth" glaciations on the diversity of life, and the early evolution of eukaryotes. Her fieldwork areas have included central Australia, west Africa, southern and central China, and the Grand Canyon. At UCSB, Susannah teaches The Age of Dinosaurs, a large (>500 students) lecture course for non-science majors, and three upper division courses: Principles of Paleontology, Invertebrate Paleobiology, and Early Life and its Environmental Context.   In 2017, Susannah received the Geological Society of America's Division of Geobiology and Geomicrobiology's post-tenure award, which recognizes her influential contributions to understanding late Proterozoic and Cambrian life, including the origin of mineralized skeletons.

BILL PROTHERO, Professor Emeritus

Professor Prothero was a physics major at Portland State College and went on to get a Ph.D. in physics at University of California, San Diego in 1967. He developed a very stable and sensitive gravity meter consisting of a superconducting ball floating on a superconducting magnet. It was used to measure gravity variations over month to year long time scales. He then went to the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics on the San Diego campus, where he developed a program to study earthquakes in remote ocean areas using seismic stations deployed from ships. These stations had to record their own data on the seafloor for as long as a month, then return to the surface on command. Prothero joined the UCSB faculty in 1976 and continued his ocean seismic work by measuring earthquakes in the Santa Barbara Channel and various California regions. Beginning in about 1993, he decided that the new microcomputer technology showed exciting promise for improving undergraduate education, particularly for non-majors, and he was awarded numerous National Science Foundation grants that enabled him to focus on that effort exclusively. This work provided general education oceanography students with "point and click" access Earth data and to use their analyses to write science papers. Just like scientists, students reviewed each other's work and learned about how science works. He retired in 2005 and is still writing educational software and working with science teachers around the world, an example of which can be seen at http://learningwithdata.org/ He's not all work, though. During graduate school, he was an avid surfer, a passion that morphed to windsurfing on the Columbia River. He is also studying jazz piano and rides his bicycle to keep in shape during the non-windsurfing winters in Santa Barbara.

MORGAN REED RAVEN

Professor Raven is an organic geochemist and geobiologist. Her research involves classic and emerging problems in beigeochemistry, ranging from the origins of life to modern and ancient climate change. A common thread shared by many of these problems is an under-studied role of organic sulfur. Her lab specializes in sulfur isotope analysis by multicollector indictively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (MC-ICP-MS), which is a powerful tool for measuring very small samples from a wide range of environments, including mangrove and wetland sediments, and extreme organic matter burial events during the Mesozoic Era. Morgan was raised in Appleton, Wisconsin, and moved to California for undergraduate studies at Stanford University, where she discovered geology after spending a few years studying chemistry and political science. She earned her B.A.S. degree at Stanford University in 2006, double majoring in Geological and Enviromental Sciences and Political Sciences. She then earned her M.S. in 2007, also in Geological and Environmental Science from Stanford. She worked as an environmental consultant in a small construction company in South San Francisco for nearly five years before commencing her Ph.D. studies at Caltech, which she completed in 2016, studying organic matter sulfurization in the modern ocean. Following that work, she was an Agouron Geobiology Fellow at Washington University in St. Louis. She joined the UCSB faculty in July 2018. Morgan loves rock music and played keyboards in a Los Angeles indie rock band during her Ph.D. work.

JAN RIETMAN

A geophysicist, Rietman joined the UCSB faculty in 1966 but left for a position in industry (EG & G) in 1970. He specializes in the 3D interpretation of seismic reflection surveys for tunneling and fault investigations.

MATTHEW RIOUX

Matt teaches courses in igneous petrology, physical geology, and analytical methods in geomaterials. His research speciality is in radiogenic isotope geochemistry, focusing on subduction zones, mid-ocean ridges, and other magmatic settings in Alaska, New Mexico, the Middle East, and modern oceans. Over the past several years, Matt has done extensive work on the Semail ophioloite in Oman and the United Arab Emirates. He uses precise dating and geochemistry to study the magmatic and tectonic history during ophiolite formation. Born and raised in Berkeley, California, Matt earned his B.A. in Earth Sciences with distinction at Boston University in 2000; he earned his Ph.D. in Geological Sciences from UCSB in 2006. He was a post doctoral associate at M.I.T. from 2006 to 2011 before returning to UCSB as a Researcher in UCSB's Earth Research Institute in 2011. He was appointed Department of Earth Science Lecturer in 2013. Over Christmas break, 2019-2020, Matt led UCSB Earth Science students on a highly successful field research excursion to Oman to study to the ophiolitic suite of rocks there.

BOB ROACH

Bob Roach took his PhD at the University of Cardiff, Wales. He was a hard rock petrologist who specialized in ultramafic rocks, such as charnockite. After his one year appointment at UCSB in 1959-60, he returned to the UK and spent his career as a faculty member at the University of Keel in Staffordshire.

CHARLES W. ROCK

Rock was an Associate at UCSB in 1962-63, then became a Lecturer in Geology in January 1964. He was a graduate of Princeton University and spent many years in Saudi Arabia with Aramco before coming to Santa Barbara, where he revitalized the introductory geology laboratories and developed a reputation as an outstanding teacher.

ROBERTA RUDNICK

Professor Rudnick's fields of expertise are geochemistry and petrology focusing on how continents form and evolve. She was a Ph.D student in Earth Chemistry at the Australian National University (1983-1987). She was an Alexander von Humboldt Post Doctoral Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (1987-1989). She returned to ANU as a Research Fellow (1989-1994), and then was on the faculty at Harvard University in 1994 until 2000, being the first woman to receive tenure there. Frdom 2000 to 2015 she was at the University of Maryland where she was named Distinguished University Professor. Her return to California to join the UCSB faculty in 2015 brought her back to the West where, as a undergraduate student at Portland State University, she saw Mt. St. Helens explode in 1980. Roberta analyses the elemental concentrations and isotopic compositions of rocks and minerals to obtain insights into the composition of the continental crust and underlying mantle lithosphere and into the processes that form them. She integrates geophysical data, such as seismic velocities and heat flow measurements with her petrologic and geochemical studies to place bounds on lithospheric composition. Her main field areas are eastern China and northern Tanzania where processes such as subduction and continental rifting affect ancient continental lithosphere. Roberta is a fellow of the Mineralogical Society of America, the Geological Society of America, the American Geophysical Union, the European Association of Geochemistry, the Geochemical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Her awards include the Norman L. Bowen Award, a Fulbright Fellowship to the University of Dar-es-Salaam in 2010, the Dana Medal, and the Harry H. Hess Medal, which the Geological Society of America awards annually in recognition of "outstanding achievements in research on the constitution and evolution of the Earth and other planets." She is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

DON RUNNELS

Geochemist Runnels arrived at UCSB in 1967 and then moved on to the University of Colorado in 1969.

GEOFF SHAW

Shaw was Public Information Officer of the New Zealand Geological Survey with an MSC degree from Auckland University. He taught Geology 2 and freshman labs in 1962-63.

RICHARD H. SIBSON, Professor Emeritus

Professor Sibson graduated BSc (Hons) in Geology from the University of Auckland and then obtained his PhD from Imperial College, London, on the structure of the Outer Hebrides thrust fault in northwest Scotland. He taught at Imperial College (1973-1982), and was then invited to the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in California and spent an "intoxicating 6 months" there. "They were incredibly generous," he says, "giving me access to a great deal of seismological data they had accumulated but hadn't yet interpreted." It was during this period that he was able to correlate the depth distribution of earthquakes in the crust with the fault zone models that he had developed. Moving to the University of California at Santa Barbara (1982-1990) Sibson continued to look at fault zones – trying to understand the dynamics of fault processes and how fluid movement at depth tied into fault instability. He returned to New Zealand in 1990 as Professor of Geology and chairman of the Geology Department in the University of Otago, retiring in 2003. Sibson's research, described as "varied and intellectually profound", includes broadly structural geology, seismotectonics, earthquake science, rock mechanics, metamorphism, hydrothermal flow through fractured rock, but with a particular focus on fault-related mineralization and coseismic fault processes. Through integration of these disciplines, he has made internationally significant scientific advances on the structure, mechanics, and mineralization of crustal fault zones in relation to earthquake source mechanics. A current focus is fault-controlled fluid redistribution in different tectonic settings. Sibson has authored 80 research papers and has contributed short courses to the mineral industry in Australia, Canada, the United States, Chile, South Africa, and Europe.

Professor Sibson attributes his life-time love of the outdoors to early excursions with his father, a "schoolmaster, bird-watcher, and inveterate island-hopper". His subsequent career choice, he says, was influenced by his uncle Sir Charles Fleming, paleontologist and naturalist, and also a Fellow of the Royal Society, who gave him "a gentle nudge in the direction of geology."

In 2003 he was accorded the rare honor of election to Fellowship of the Royal Society of London in recognition of his scientific achievements, together with the Distinguished Research Medal of the University of Otago.

At UCSB Sibson delighted in teaching structural geology and the Poleta Folds part of summer field geology.

ALEX SIMMS

Professor Simms took his BS degree at Oklahoma State University in 2001 and then his PhD at Rice University in 2006. He returned to OSU as Assistant Professor following his PhD and then agreed to join the UCSB faculty in 2010. He specializes in siliciclastic sedimentology/stratigraphy, Quaternary science, coastal geology. His research focuses on Holocene sea levels, coastal records of and responses to climate and tectonic change, ice sheet reconstructions, and Quaternary history of the southern Great Plains. He is particularly interested in reconstructing Quaternary sea levels around the globe and the role of the Antarctic and Northern Hemisphere Ice Sheets in controlling sea-level changes over the last glacial-eustatic cycle. Alex was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to help support sabbatical leave study at Durham University working with colleagues on the Late Pleistocene/Holocene glacial and sea-level history of Antarctica, as well as conducting fieldwork locally on the deglacial sea-level history of western Scotland.

FRANK J. SPERA, Professor Emeritus

Soon after Frank Spera was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1950, he showed early interest in the outdoors by collecting plants, frogs, and rocks. He grew up on the venerable Wissahickon Schist, a pelitic, medium-grade metamorphic rock, and thus was fascinated by the veins and folds and minerals of this unit that literally cropped out in his backyard. He recalls fondly the first time he correctly identified a museum standard sample of kyanite found in the woods behind the family house. But Frank had little interest in formal schooling. In fact he 'hated' elementary and junior high school. Instead, he could not wait to return home, whip out his chemistry set to do experiments, or go to local quarries and hunt for minerals, or mix up chemicals in search for the perfect rocket fuel. Thus Frank's early interests in physics, chemistry, and biology - anything science - he lived for. Then "Sputnik" went up when he was 8, thus that crystallizing his interest in planets and the Earth as a planet An influential 6th grade teacher got him started on the road to geology, and by 10th grade he was reading college books in physics, geology, chemistry, and calculus. Then finally around 10th grade it all came together and he realized that he would have to worry about grades if he wanted to get into college. At the same time Spera also realized that geology includes all the other sciences, so he matriculated at Franklin and Marshall College in 1968 and majored in geology. Between his junior and senior year, a summer of geologic mapping project in the Klamath Mountains of California was another pivotal event for young Frank, in that he mapped the Coast Range thrust with the high grade blueschist rocks, which, unbeknownst to a 'dumb kid from philly', Gary Ernst, the 'high priest' of ophiolitic rocks, had already studied a decade earlier.

Franklin and Marshall had some great teachers, great geology was exposed in the Valley and Ridge, and the Piedmont was nearby to explore and make maps. Additionally, Franklin and Marshall was strictly an undergraduate college, so Frank and fellow students had offices, use of college vehicles for weekend sojourns, and unlimited use of labs and many other college facilities. Spera took his B.A. degree in geology there in 1972.

Spera started graduate school at UC Berkeley in fall 1972, obtained his PhD there in igeous petrology and geochemistry in 1977, and then went directly to Princeton University as assistant professor, receiving tenure there in 1983. He remained at Princeton until July 1986 when he was lured to UCSB.

At UCSB he has focused his research on thermodynamics and fluid mechanics of igneous melts to learn about the physics and chemistry of the Earth's mantle and core. He has also delved into the volcanic hazards of southern Nevada. His UCSB courses include igneous petrology, an introductory course about the solar system, and mineralogy. He retired from active teaching in 2018.

ARTHUR G. SYLVESTER, Professor Emeritus

Professor Sylvester is a general geologist with primary interests in structural geology and neotectonics. His publications and technical reports have dealt with the petrology and emplacement mechanisms of granitic plutons in Norway and eastern California, the deformation of minerals in thermal aureoles of plutons and thrust faults, the structure and deformation history of uplifted blocks along the San Andreas fault zone, and vertical movements of active and potentially faults in southern California, western Nevada, and western Wyoming. In addition, he has published papers on the volcanic history of parts of the North Atlantic, earthquakes in southern California, occurrences of rare fossils in eastern California, and morphotectonics of southern Italy. Sylvester was born and raised in southern California and received his A.B. degree in liberal arts from Pomona College in 1959. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Oslo, Norway, where he matriculated in 1961 and did the field work on the Vrådal pluton in southern Norway that formed the basis of his M.A. thesis at UCLA in 1963. He continued in geology at UCLA under the supervision of Clem Nelson, Gerhard Oertel, and John Christie, collaborating with them on the comprehensive study of Papoose Flat pluton in the Inyo Mountains of eastern California. His part of that work, the structural and metamorphic petrology of the country rocks around the pluton, was the subject of his PhD dissertation in 1966. Early in his career he was a research geologist for the Shell Development Company. There he was introduced to the tectonics of strike-slip faults and, together with Robert R. Smith, developed the concept of "palm-tree structures" ("flower structures" in the parlance of the Exxon Corporation that developed the idea separately and simultaneously). Their study of the San Andreas fault in the Mecca Hills generated Sylvester's interests in neotectonics and ultimately in tectonic geodesy. Sylvester became a member of the geological faculty at UCSB in the days before affirmative action; indeed his interview for the position consisted solely of lunch with Bob Webb and others in the darkened backroom of Bray's 101 restaurant. His tenure in the department lasted 35 years,

and in that time he was Chairman of the Department for five years.  He taught courses in field geology at the introductory, intermediate, and advanced levels, structural geology, introductory geology, and neotectonics. He took a break in 1972-74 to be Director of the University of California's Scandinavian Study Center at the University of Bergen, Norway, where he was associated with Bergen's Seismological Observatory in a study of the surveillance and prediction of volcanic eruptions in the North Atlantic.

Sylvester was a Distinguished Lecturer for the American Association of Petroleum Geologists in 1984, served as director of that association's Structural Geology School for three years, and was an associate editor for AAPG Bulletin for four years. With Tor Nilsen, he led AAPG's field seminar in Exploration of Strike-slip and Rift Basins from 1989 to 2005. In 1994 he received Coast Geological Society's Distinguished Teaching Award in Education. He was the Science Editor of the Bulletin of the Geological Society of America for six years from 1989 to 1995 and received the Society's Distinguished Service Award for that work.

In 1995, Sylvester was a Senior Fulbright Research Scholar at the University of Oslo, Norway, where again he studied the emplacement and evolution of granitic plutons in southern Norway. He continued and broadened that work as a Norwegian Research Council Fellow in 1996. While in Norway, Sylvester presented a V.M. Goldschmidt Lecture to the Norwegian Geological Survey, a lecture series named in honor of one of the foremost geochemists of the 20th century. Also in 1995 he received the University of California's Presidents Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research Mentoring, and in 1997 the UCSB Academic Senate's Award for Distinguished Teaching in the Mathematical, Physical, and Life Sciences. The UCSB geology graduate students honored him with their Faculty Member of the Year award in 1999, and the undergraduate students did so, too, in 2000. He retired from active teaching in 2003 but returned occasionally to teach the summer field course. Sylvester is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America, and a member of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, the Coast Geological Society, the Seismological Society of America, and the Society of Sigma Xi.  He s a Retired Registered Geologist in the State of California since 2010. In 2016 he received UCSB's Dickson Emeriti Fellowship to support expenses for his book with Elizabeth O'Black Gans entitled "Roadside Geology of Southern California." That book was awarded the Geoscience Information Society's "Best Popular Guidebook for 2017."

TOSHIRO TANIMOTO

Professor Tanimoto took his B.S. (1977) and M.S. (1979) at the University of Tokyo and his PhD in geophysics at the University California, Berkeley in 1982. He was an assistant professor of geophysics at the University of Washington (1984-1985) and at Caltech (1985-1992) before coming to UCSB in 1992. Toshiro is a theoretical seismologist specializing in wave theory and analysis. He has developed new methods to visualize seismic wavefields as they propagate across a region. By exploiting the high density of seismic recording stations in southern California, he illuminates how the underlying crustal structure interacts with seismic energy to produce surface displacements. Such information reveals the nature of rocks at depth as well as spatial variations in surface expressions of seismic energy. He teaches courses in geophysics and inverse theory.

Bruce H. Tiffney

Professor Tiffney is a native New Englander with a BS in Geology from Boston University and a minor in Biology in 1971. His Ph.D.. in Plant systematics, morphology and evolution was from Harvard in 1977. Tiffney spent nine and a half years in the Department of Biology and the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University where he taught evolutionary biology, biogeography and paleobotany, and won the award for best teacher in Science and Mathematics. In 1986 he migrated to the west coast and the Department of Geological Sciences at UC Santa Barbara where he's taught historical geology, introductory paleontology, paleobotany and angiosperm systematics, winning the award for best teacher in Math, Life and Physical Sciences in 1998. More recently he served as the Dean of the College of Creative Studies, stepping down from that position in 2017. Tiffney's research intertwines evolutionary biology and the plant fossil record on a number of levels. At the basal level of hard data, he is an alpha taxonomist, working on the fossil record of angiosperms as evinced by their fruits and seeds – one of perhaps a dozen people on the planet with this specialization. Tiffney has studied material from northern California, the east coast of North America, Europe and Africa. These individual identifications join data already in the literature to allow understanding of the patterns of evolution and migration of angiosperm lineages in response to climatic and zoological change through time. Thus Tiffney's apparently narrow focus on fossil fruits and seeds has led him to be a primary player in elucidating the paleobiogeography of land plants in the last 65 million years and the initiator of studies on the relationship between animal dispersers and plants in the fossil record. That interest has in turn led to a further focus

on the evolution and dynamics of terrestrial ecosystems and the changes that have occurred as plant and animal life have co-evolved in the broadest sense since plants first came onto land. At the grandest level of enquiry, Tiffney has joined colleagues across the field of paleobotany to develop a database of all known fossil plant records that can then be used to examine patterns of diversification and extinction and their relationship to biotic and abiotic stimuli.

GEORGE R. TILTON (1923-2010)

Professor Tilton was born and raised in central Illinois. After three and half semesters at Blackburn College, a small two-year school near St. Louis, Missouri, Tilton was drafted into the Army in 1943 to service in WWII. Upon discharge, he resumed his college career in 1945 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he graduated with a bachelor of science degree with high honors in chemistry in 1948. Upon taking his Ph.D. in 1951 at the University of Chicago in geochemistry, Tilton then accepted a position as a physical chemist and geochronologist at Carnegie Institution of Washington, D.C., Washington, first in the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism and later at the Geophysical Laboratory. Tilton joined the UCSB faculty as Professor of Geochemistry in fall 1965 and retired from active teaching in 1991. Tilton is regarded as the "father of uranium-lead geochronology" for granitic rocks. His paper "Uranium-Lead Ages" is a classic. With Claire Patterson, he dated the first rock ever to be analyzed for its absolute age – a one billion year-old granite from the Canadian Shield. He led the pioneering studies that defined and refined methods and applications for all isotopic systems, as well as on the uranium-lead system, devising and confirming the basic procedures for analysis that are still in use today.

GEORGE TUNELL (1900-1996)

(Memorial by Robert Learned, 2004: Geological Society of America Memorials, v. 33, 57-61.)

"George Tunell was born April 4, 1900, in Chicago, Illinois, where his father, George Gerard Tunell, Sr., served as tax commissioner and vice president of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway. He inherited his love of academic excellence and scientific rigor from his father, who had earned his doctorate in economics from the University of Minnesota. At the age of seven, during a trip with his father, Tunell received a cigar box full of minerals and ore specimens from a miner at Castle Hot Springs, Arizona; thus began his lifelong interest in mineralogy. "During his school years, he was an avid visitor at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, and before he graduated from Evanston, Illinois, Township High School in 1918, he had decided to pursue the field of mining geology, so he applied for admission to Harvard University. From 1918 until 1922, Tunell pursued a rigorous undergraduate curriculum in the Engineering School of Harvard University and graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor of science degree in mining geology in 1922. "As a graduate student in Harvard University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences from 1922 to 1925, he focused his research on the field and petrographic aspects of oxidized cappings of disseminated copper deposits. His field studies began in 1922 at Tyrone, New Mexico, where he participated in the landmark secondary enrichment investigations of Augustus Locke. He conducted similar studies at Morenci, Arizona, in 1923, and at Bingham Canyon, Utah, in 1924.

"Tunell attributed his scientific successes in large part to the sound training and constant encouragement of his professors at Harvard. Among those he was especially grateful to were Professor Graton in economic and mining geology and Professor Bridgeman in thermodynamics. Honors received while he was a graduate student at Harvard included the George H. Emerson Scholarship and the John Harvard Fellowship.

"Although Tunell left the Harvard campus in 1925, he continued his research in oxidized cappings at Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory, and in 1931 he received a doctorate in geology. His dissertation, "The oxidation of disseminated copper ores in altered porphyry," constituted a major contribution toward an understanding of the physico-chemical genesis and mineralogic relationships in the supergene zone of porphyry copper deposits. A copy of this work is to be found in the office of virtually every porphyry copper mine.

"Tunell's professional career began in 1925 at the Geophysical Laboratory in Washington, D.C., where he served as staff petrologist until 1945. His early experimental investigations there were related to his graduate work in field and petrographic studies of porphyry copper deposits and were designed to elucidate the physico-chemical basis of leached capping formation. In collaboration with Eugene Posnjak, he determined the equilibrium relations of tenorite and the basic and normal sulfates of copper in the system, cupric oxide-sulphur trioxide-water (1929), the stability relations of goethite and hematite (1931), and the stability relations of goethite, tenorite, brochantite, and antlerite in the system: ferric oxide-cupric oxide-sulphur trioxide-water (1931).

"While he was conducting experimental studies related to supergene chemical processes, Tunell became increasingly aware of the need for the application of sound thermodynamic principles. Consequently, he began a series of very fundamental studies in thermodynamic principles, an endeavor that continued to interest him into his final years. Most of his thermodynamics-related works were published under the auspices of the Geophysical Laboratory, including those works published as late as the mid-1980s. Titles published during his tenure at the Geophysical Laboratory included "Definition and evaluation of the fugacity of an element or compound in the gaseous state" (1931), and "On the history and analytical expression of the first and second laws of thermodynamics and the role of the differentials dW and dQ" (1932).

"Structural crystallography of ore minerals was the focus of Tunell's research during many of his years at the Geophysical Laboratory. His publications include those on the crystal structures of tenorite (Tunell, Posnjak, and Ksanda, 1933), chalcanthite (Barth and Tunell, 1935), calaverite (Tunell and Ksanda, 1935), krennerite (Tunell and Ksanda, 1936), sylvanite (Tunell, 1941), and bornite (Tunell and Adams, 1949). His work in X-ray crystallography often led to pioneering innovations in methodology. For example, he derived the Lorentz correction factor for equi-inclination Weissenberg photographs (1939), and he and A.L. Patterson (1942) developed a method for the summation of the Fourier series used in X-ray diffraction analysis. His wife, Ruth, whom he married in 1931 during his tenure at the Geophysical Laboratory, often ably assisted him with his Xray crystallographic investigations.

"During his 20 years at the Geophysical Laboratory, Tunell received numerous prestigious honors, including election to membership in the Washington Academy of Sciences and to Sigma Xi. The Carnegie Institution designated him as their official representative to the Seventeenth International Geologic Congress in Moscow. Tunell was elected to the presidency of the Geological Society of Washington, to the vice-presidency of the Washington Academy of Sciences, and to the vice-presidency of the Mineralogical Society of America. He was also granted the Naval Ordnance Development Award for his wartime research on gun barrel technology.

"In 1945, Tunell left the Geophysical Laboratory and entered the academic world at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. He had applied for a temporary teaching appointment there, primarily because of his and Ruth's health problems in the humid climate of Washington, D.C. He served as visiting Professor of Mineralogy and Metalliferous Geology at CalTech from 1945 to 1947, during which time he continued his X-ray crystallographic studies and collaborated with Linus Pauling on the crystal structure of gold-silver tellurides (1952).

"In 1947, Tunell and Ruth decided to remain in southern California. Upon learning of the situation, James Gilluly, then Chairman of the Geology Department at UCLA, promptly asked Tunell if he knew someone who might be interested in an assistant professorship at UCLA. Sensing Gilluly's embarrassment, Tunell answered: "Jim, if you're offering the position to me, I accept it with pleasure." Within two years of the initial appointment, he was awarded a full professorship.

"Although research continued to be an important part of his endeavors, Tunell considered his teaching responsibilities to be paramount. He was an excellent teacher, as former students will attest, and his most highly appreciated attributes were his depth of knowledge of the subject matter and his unselfish sharing of time to impart that knowledge to his students. He taught a broad range of subjects at UCLA, including courses in mineralogy, optical mineralogy, X-ray crystallography, ore deposit geology, and chemical thermodynamics.

"Tunell's intense interest in the genesis of ore deposits continued unabated during his years at UCLA, and his early interest in the genesis of mercury ore deposits is clearly indicated in his address as retiring president of the Mineralogical Society of America (1951). He and his graduate students embarked on an extensive series of field, petrographic, and chemical equilibrium studies that proved to be of significant relevance to an understanding of the genesis of mercury ore deposits. Investigations carried out during his UCLA years included solubility studies of cinnabar and metacinnabar in aqueous sodium sulfide solutions (Dickson and Tunell, 1954, 1958), sulfur in aqueous sodium sulfide solutions (Arntson, Dickson and Tunell, 1958, 1960), and stibnite in aqueous sodium sulfide solutions (Arntson, Dickson, and Tunell, 1966). "The stability relations of cinnabar and metacinnabar" (Dickson and Tunell, 1959) was an equally important contribution to the series of these investigations.

"Fundamental crystallography continued to occupy Tunell's interest. He published a number of works during his UCLA tenure, including "The angle between the a-axis and the trace of the rhombic section on the pinacoid in the plagioclases" (1952), "Calculation of polar and direct axial angles of triclinic crystals from interfacial angles" (1954), and "A laboratory manual of crystallography for students of mineralogy and geology" (Tunell and Murdoch, 1957).

"Likewise, Tunell's interest in fundamental thermodynamics continued undiminished at UCLA; his publications included "Evaluation of the chemical potential in terms of intensive quantities" (1957) and "Relations between intensive thermodynamic quantities and the first derivatives in a binary system of one phase" (1960).

"Many honors were bestowed upon Tunell during his years at UCLA. He served as President of the Mineralogical Society of America, served two terms as Vice President of the Geological Society of America, served as President of the Branner Geologic Club of Southern California, and was honored by the naming of a new mineral, "tunellite." His years at UCLA were very rewarding ones. He was greatly admired and held in high esteem by fellow faculty members and by students alike.

"In 1962, at his own request and that of the geology faculty at U.C. Riverside, Tunell was transferred to UC Riverside, where a former student, Professor Frank Dickson, and his graduate students were conducting field, petrographic, and experimental investigations related to mercury ore deposits. Many significant papers resulted from those studies, including "Chemical processes in the formation of mercury ores and ores of mercury and antimony" (Tunell, 1964), "Mercury and antimony deposits associated with active hot springs in the western United States" (Dickson and Tunell, 1968), and "On the origin of the livingstonite deposits at Huitzuco, Guerrero, Mexico" (Tunell, Learned, and Lawrence 1976). The research group at UCR conducted several chemical equilibrium studies relevant to mercury ore deposits. Those studies included orpiment in aqueous sodium sulfide solutions (Weissberg, Dickson, and Tunell, 1966), cinnabar-quartz in aqueous sodium sulfide solutions (Learned, Tunell, and Dickson 1967), quartz in aqueous sodium sulfide and sodium hydroxide solutions (Learned, Dickson, and Tunell, 1966), and cinnabar-stibnite in aqueous sodium sulfide solutions (Learned, Tunell, and Dickson, 1974). "Tunell's enthusiasm for teaching continued throughout his years at UCR, where he taught courses in mineralogy, optical mineralogy, thermodynamics, and ore deposit geology. Few teachers have shown greater understanding of their subjects or greater interest in their students.

"During his years at UCR, Tunell served as President of the Geochemical Society, Vice Chairman of the Cordilleran Section of the Geological Society of America, and gave invited lectures at the Sociedad Geologica Mexicana.

"When Tunell reached the mandatory retirement age of 67, the University of California honored him with the status of Professor Emeritus. He and Ruth then moved to Santa Barbara, California, a locale that had attracted Tunell since his boyhood days. The geology faculty at U.C. Santa Barbara, realizing their good fortune, soon requested that Tunell be recalled to active duty, and so began another long chapter in his teaching career and one that he enjoyed immensely.

"Tunell's enthusiasm for research remained strong during his nearly 30 years of "retirement" in Santa Barbara. He discovered and determined the crystal structure of a new mineral, gianellaite (Tunell, Fahey, and Daugherty, 1977), and authored or co-authored six research papers on the mineralogy and geochemistry of mercury ore deposits (Dickson and Tunell, 1968), (Tunell, 1970), (Learned, Tunell, and Dickson, 1974), (Tunell, Learned, and Lawrence, 1976), (Tunell, 1978), and (Rytuba and Tunell, 1978). He also avidly pursued his lifelong research interest in chemical thermodynamics and authored six fundamental publications on the subject (1975, 1977, 1979, 1981, 1984, 1985).

"Honors continued to be bestowed upon Tunell during these years in retirement. He presented invited lectures on the geochemistry of mercury deposits at Purdue University, The University of Madrid, Spain, and The University of Ljubljana, Yugoslavia. The Mineralogical Society of America awarded him its prestigious Roebling Medal. The Washington Academy of Sciences invited him to present its annual J. Willard Gibbs lecture, and the Robert A. Welch Foundation invited him to give presentations in its lecture series.

"Tunell's contributions to the fields of crystallography, thermodynamics, and phase equilibria of aqueous systems related to ore genesis were truly remarkable. As Gunnar Kullerud noted as he introduced Tunell at his Roebling Medal presentation, 'All of the Tunell publications can serve asmodels of systematic, careful, and imaginative experimental and theoretical studies. '"

Not mentioned in this comprehensive memorial by Learned, but commonly known by his students is that Tunell was a champion welterweight boxer at Harvard University. But even more remarkable to the UCLA students who knew Tunell and quaked in his dour, gruff, no nonsense presence, is that he was a champion ballroom dancer. And although he seemed like a gruff old man to this student, not infrequently could one detect a twinkle in his eye that indicated a wry, deeply concealed humor and a knowledge of things beyond most people's ken. (ed.)

DAVID L. VALENTINE

Born in San Diego, California, and raised in Davis by parents who both worked for the University, Professor Valentine has not strayed far from his UC roots. His higher education started with science classes at UC Davis while still in high school, followed by a BS degree in Chemistry/Biochemistry in 1995 and an MS degree in Chemistry in 1996, both from UC San Diego. Life-long obsessions with dirt, chemistry, and the environment drew Valentine to study sediment biogeochemistry at UC Irvine, in its newly created Earth Systems Science program. He earned an MS degree there in 1998 and a Ph.D. in 2000. During his graduate work Valentine began to appreciate the importance of microbes in Earth's elemental cycles, and received a postdoctoral fellowship in microbial biology from the National Science Foundation to pursue research at Scripps Institution of Oceanography from 2000-2002. Valentine joined the UCSB faculty in 2001, where he conducts research at the interface of chemistry, microbiology, and Earth science, specifically investigating the roles of microbes in modulating Earth's elemental cycles. Valentine's teaching has included Introductory Oceanography, Earth Systems Oceans/Atmospheres, Field Studies in Marine Geochemistry and a quarterly graduate seminar. His awards include an NSF CAREER award in Chemical Oceanography and the 2009 Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research Mentorship.He is an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow and an American Chemical Society Expert. In 2018, Valentine was accorded the first Robert M. Norris Professorship in the Department of Earth Science. See more about Professor Valentine's work at: http://www.methane.geol.ucsb.edu

JAMES W. VALENTINE

James W. Valentine is an American evolutionary paleobiologist and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He was on the UCSB faculty from 1975 until 1990 when he was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences and removed to University of California, Davis. Valentine integrated study of the geologic and biologic events during the Precambrian-Cambrian transition, in concert with a consortium of workers. He also had deep interest in the processes of diversification that were responsible for the appearance of the very unusual biosphere of the early Paleozoic. He is also interested in the macroevolution of ecogeographic units (species' populations, communities, provinces, etc.), especially with regard to diversity problems in marine bivalves in the Cenozoic oceans. According to Valentine, this involves "accumulating a database of the geographic and geologic ranges of all genera and subgenera, and all species in certain local cases through the last 65 million years..."

AARON CLEMENT WATERS (1905-1991)

A Biographical Memoir by Clifford A. Hopson, 2007, National Academy of Sciences (NAS), Biographical Memoirs: V.89, 368-391.

"Aaron Waters was born in Waterville, Washington, on May 6, 1905, the son of pioneer parents and the youngest of seven children. His early years were spent on the family homestead and wheat ranch near Waterville, on the western edge of the Columbia River Plateau in the shadow of the Cascade Mountains. He worked on the ranch during his youth and helped to run it at age 12 and 13 during the last years of World War I, when his older brothers went off to war. Following graduation from high school, Waters entered the University of Washington, supporting himself by work in a gas station and other jobs. He began prelaw studies but later changed to geology, partly from his love of the out-of-doors but influenced especially by his college friend Richard E. Fuller, who later became both a distinguished geologist and a long-time director of the Seattle Museum of Art. "Waters earned a B.Sc. in geology (cum laude) in 1927 and an M.Sc. in 1928, both from the University of Washington. Waters continued his studies at Yale University, known for its program in geology and development of leaders in that field. He earned his Ph.D. in 1930 under the mentorship of Professor Adolph Knopf. His dissertation was "Geology of the Southern Half of the Chelan [30'] Quadrangle, Washington." "The first taste of university teaching came during his doctoral studies at Yale, where Waters served as instructor in the Geology Department (1928-1930). He accepted appointment as assistant professor of geology at Stanford University and soon rose to professor and remained at Stanford for 21 years (1930-1951).

"World War II intervened, and Waters took leave from Stanford to join the U.S. Geological Survey's expanded exploration program for strategic minerals, deemed vital to the war effort. Mercury was among those essential metals whose known reserves were limited, and Waters teamed with other volcanologists—mercury ores being associated with volcanic and subvolcanic rocks—to improve the inventory. His introduction to mercury (quicksilver) deposits had begun in the prewar years in southwestern Oregon (1935), and these were now the focus of his war-related fieldwork in Arkansas, Oregon, and elsewhere in the western United States. Resulting U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) publications appeared in 1951.

"A brief return to ore deposits research came with Waters' participation in the USGS' uranium exploration program on the Colorado Plateau (1951-1952), where volcanogenic processes once again proved important (1953). Here the search for magmatic sources of the strata-bound uranium ores led to his collaboration with Charles B. Hunt on the petrology and petrogenesis of subvolcanic rocks of the North La Sal stock and its laccoliths (1958).

"Waters and close friend James Gilluly, then a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Professor A. O. Woodford of Pomona College, had become disenchanted with the existing textbooks on introductory physical geology, and began to write one of their own. The first edition of Principles of Geology (1951), superbly illustrated by the skillful drawings of Stanford colleague Robert R. Compton, was an immediate success. This book, substantially improved in its second edition in 1959 and its third edition in 1968, remained the leading physical geology textbook for more than two decades.

"A uniquely productive and happy period of Aaron Waters' career came with his appointment in 1952 as professor of geology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, a position he held for the next 11 years.

"Waters returned to his West Coast roots in 1963 by accepting a post in the budding Geology Department at UC Santa Barbara, slated to grow into a major University of California campus. He attracted new, research-oriented faculty members who enlarged the department and enhanced its stature. Shortly afterward, he turned an attentive ear to the offered opportunity to build a geological program from the ground up at the UC's newest campus at Santa Cruz (UCSC). The challenge proved irresistible and Waters transferred to UCSC in 1967, plunging into the demanding task of building a department.

"Waters' expertise in volcanology opened the way for a new, exciting field of research and teaching during the Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz years: lunar geology and exploration of the Moon's surface. With NASA's Gemini Project to orbit the Moon, and the follow-up Apollo Project to land on and sample its surface, an urgent need arose to learn more about the geologic processes that had shaped the lunar surface and operated within its interior.

"Retirement from UCSC came in 1972 but with no letup in the pace of Waters' professional activities. His university teaching continued, as did his geologic research. Most notable was the near-completion of his beloved longterm project on the geology of the Columbia River Gorge, separating Oregon and Washington (1973). He also lent his expertise to federal research organizations as a consultant in volcanology.

"Many honors came his way, including a Guggenheim Fellowship (1937-1938), election to the National Academy of Sciences (1964) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1966), and the Penrose Medal of the Geological Society of America (1982), its highest award."

DON WEAVER, Professor Emeritus

Professor Weaver was born in 1927 in the rural area of eastern Washington in a 3-room farmhouse without electricity or running water, delivered by a mid-wife. He was the 3rd of 9 children. He spent his childhood in the late 1920’s and early ‘30’s along the Oregon coast where his father was able to obtain work building the first bridges that made possible coastal road travel.          Life during the depression of the 1930’s was difficult but made tolerable by poaching wild game and pouching apples and other produce for food and canning. Don’s family moved to California in the late ‘30’s but he left home at the age of fourteen. After working on the swing shift in a steel fabrication plant in Oakland at the start of World War II, he joined the Contractors Pacific Naval Airbases in 1943 and was sent as a laborer to help rebuild the Naval Facilities at Pearl Harbor. Following his two brothers who had seen action in the Pacific, he joined the Marines in 1945 and trained for the anticipated invasion of the Japanese homeland. It was this early life experience that so affected his latent character development. Following the atomic bombing of Japan, Don was assigned to Military Police duties in Hawaii and Guam. He returned to the States in 1947 for the first of several leg surgeries, and fortunately met his late wife Helen, then the librarian at the Naval Hospital. They married and had three children.

Following his discharge in 1949, Helen tutored Don in English, German, and Polish. She had an MA from the University of Wisconsin and had majored in foreign languages (German, French and Polish). It was discovered that he had lifelong hearing problems, making it difficult to hear certain sounds and thus pronounce certain words. He made up high school deficiencies at a local college and entered UC Berkeley in 1950 with the financial aid of the GI Bill of Rights.  He received his BA studying at Berkeley and Davis, emphasizing such diverse subjects as zoology, Wild Life Management (with the renowned Professor A. Starker Leopold), civil engineering, forestry, and agriculture. During the summer, Don worked in the heavy construction industry to earn extra money to support his growing family. He went on to earn an MA and Ph.D. in Paleontology and Geology studying with Professor Bob Kleinpell, who had close industrial contacts in the petroleum industry. It was these industrial contacts that led Don into a lifetime of industrial consulting, not only in the Petroleum Industry but also in Engineering Geology. He had close association with Dames and Moore, an international Earth science consulting firm, Exxon, Mobil Oil, and various engineering and agricultural organizations.

While working for Mobil and on his Ph.D. dissertation in the Santa Ynez Mountains, he visited the recently established Santa Barbara Campus of the University of California. The Department of Physical Sciences consisted of Chemistry, Physics, and Geology. Biology had been separated earlier and given its own building. The Geology Division consisted of three professors, the renowned Bob Webb from UCLA, Bob Norris, a graduate of Scripps, and the recently hired Dick Fisher, from the University of Washington.

Following a visit to Berkeley by Webb, where he met Don’s wife and family of three boys, Don was offered an Acting Assistant Professorship. Don still believes that Bob’s meeting with his wife was what got him the job! He joined the faculty in January 1959, completed his dissertation that fall and was awarded the Ph.D. in January 1960.

The Chairman of the Department was Ernest Bickerdike, a chemist, who informed Don that though he was a “Berkeley graduate”, he would be expected to mainly teach and do a modest amount of research. Bickerdike also asked if there were any jobs in paleontology or a future for paleontologists. It was made clear to Don that it would be wise to join the “church of his choice” and to sell the maroon Buick convertible he had inherited, as it was not very appropriate for an Assistant Professor! In those days the Applied Arts, such as Auto Mechanics, were still taught on campus, and faculty were asked to chaperone student dances. Don became the Faculty Advisor for the graduating class of ’64. The place was a college campus out of the ‘30s. He was expected to maintain his “industrial relations” as an asset in placing our graduates. Shortly thereafter with our first Masters degrees, Exxon and later Mobil Oil started recruiting at the campus and awarded the Department small unrestricted grants.

Don taught courses in Stratigraphic Paleontology, Historical Geology, Introductory Geology, and Field Geology. He was quite shy in lectures during the early years because of his life long hearing/pronunciation impairment, though he tried to hide it by not using certain otherwise common words. He failed at this at least one time when a student interrupted to ask what the word was that he had used. The student asked if the word was “bat tree” or “battery”. It was of course the latter, a word he had mispronounced all his life along with such words as "penny" and "aluminum".

In 1961 he initiated the first Summer Field class, joining Berkeley and UCLA in the White Mountains at the so-called Poleta Folds. In ’62 and ’63 with fellow instructor Bruce Nolf and department technician George Hughes, he founded the first independent Summer Field Camp for UCSB. He took the camp to Santa Cruz Island in ’64 and ’65, and later split it between the island and Poleta folds. He taught it nine times, though the excellent TAs largely ran it toward the end when his legs finally gave out. He concluded his island studies by successfully negotiating an agreement between the owner of Santa Cruz Island, Dr. Carey Stanton, and the Regents of the University of California for the establishment of the Channel Island Field Station as part of the University Land Reserve System. He subsequently served as its director for a number of years.

As his consulting practice matured, Don taught courses in groundwater and well design, engineering geology, as well as graduate seminars in Stratigraphic Paleontology. He held Work-Study shops in applied engineering geology where students worked part time on an industrial job such as water well design and construction, or land stability/sea cliff retreat problems, along with report preparation and seminar discussion. In his classes he often discussed professional ethics, and the distinction between ethics and morals.

His early collaborative research produced six monographic works published by the University of California Press on the Eocene and Oligocene foraminifers and mollusks from the Coast Ranges and Central Valley of California. These were often written in conjunction with his former professor and fellow students from Berkeley, who were now in the petroleum industry, and students from UCSB. Notable exceptions include: The Geology of the Northern Channel Islands, co-authored with Bruce Nolf, Dave Doerner, and students from the ‘64 and ’65 Summer Field classes and published by the Pacific Section of the AAPG; The Limits of Lyellian Series and Epochs, written at the University of Tübingen and published as part of the Colloque sur L’Eocene, Paris, May 1968; complete but unpublished manuscripts entitled Groundwater in California - Geology and the Law, co-authored with his son Mark, then recently graduated from Yale Law School; and The Miocene Stratigraphy in California Revisited.

These latter manuscripts were never published, largely for social and/or political reasons, as one might imagine from the subject matter. The Miocene paper, though primarily written by Don, was later revised and published by his old Professor and published by the AAPG. Ground water in California at the time was and perhaps still is a hot political subject. As the saying goes, “whisky is for drinking and water is for fighting over”. He was elected an Associate Member of the Society of the Sigma Xi, Devoted to the Promotion of Research in Science for his work in early Tertiary biochronology. He was active in the Pacific Coast Sections of the AAPG and the SEPM, which published several of his early papers. Following the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill by Union Oil Company, he was asked to testify before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee reviewing the petroleum activity in the Santa Barbara Channel. An expanded version of his testimony was published in 1970 by Our Sun entitled Santa Barbara: An Overview.

During the Vietnam war years the campus was engulfed in a tumultuous era of numerous disruptions, both on and off the campus, at times deadly or potentially deadly. A bomb at the Faculty Club killed the caretaker, classes were disrupted, pins in the card files in the library were pulled and the cards scattered, students “captured” the new computer center, students demanded a vote at department meetings. Don was often quoted as saying the students wanted to "take a course in surgery without taking a course in anatomy”. Academic standards were difficult or impossible to maintain, and the faculty, administrators and students were all involved. Being an ex-Marine, Don was an outspoken supporter of the local ROTC program, which had come under attack. He was invited and attended seminars at Fort Lewis by the Department of the Army for briefings on the modern Army. He became a frequent speaker on problems at the University around the State, which were surreptitiously monitored by the administration. He was asked to join secret meetings with then Governor Reagan and an ad hoc committee of the Regents on academic deterioration. When he was invited to and testified at an open meeting of the Regents, he became persona non grata to the liberal elements on campus while being cheered on by the rare conservative elements. Subsequently his phone was removed from his office, preventing Regent Lawrence from reaching him, but thereafter the phone was “mysteriously” returned. He was increasingly threatened and harassed on campus and at home. Calls to his home were traced by the FBI. So much for so-called “academic freedom”. One member of the Regents suggested that he stay in the University but consider expanding his consulting practice, which he did for the remainder of his thirty-year tenure in the Department.

His “expanded” consulting practice, often involving graduate students, included such work as groundwater basin studies, the regional geology for the expansion of the plutonium facility at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratories, agricultural development of fruit, cattle, horses, and marketing for an offshore organization, water well location and design for the Western White House for now President Ronald Reagan, and retention by the FBI and CIA for limited stateside duty regarding academic unrest and oil reserves in China. His work for the oil industry expanded to Alaska, the West Coast, and Baja, Mexico, much of which continued to involve students when and where appropriate. He was pleased to find that these industrial contacts for the students often led to their employment by industry, whether it was in the petroleum industry, engineering geology, water exploration, federal and local government, or as individual private consultants.

His wife, friend, tutor and cultural better half passed away in 1984. Though emotionally lost for a few years, he was fortunate enough to eventually find and marry another multi-linguist, introduced by her German father as "a cultured lady and a good cook”. Ulli had taught German at the University and Santa Barbara City College and was an avid tennis player and lover of Bach.

Don retired from the University after 30 years, having served half of his time there as a more typical professor (though few students or colleagues would have called him “typical”) and half as a rogue, i.e. as a “spy” as he has been called, or as he prefers, the “eyes” for the politicians who oversee the University, the general public, and the federal government. He was not a cultured or classically educated person, but after WWII there were few professors who were. He enjoyed brown bagging it with professor “double LL” Willson, a Yale scholar and the founder of the local chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. Larry often told of how the University had been invaded by GIs, educated under the GI Bill of Rights and who had been first class mechanics before the war, but were now second class engineers and professors, i.e. without a classical education. Larry did not realize that he was speaking about Don!

In retirement, Don continued to consult with industry and devoted 11 years advising on a pro bono basis the Conrad Hilton Foundation

CNHF, World Vision, members with Air Force One	Weaver, Borlough, and Hilton	Weaver with Mixtecs at CIMMYT

regarding water development in Ghana, West Africa, in conjunction with World Vision, and in southern Mexico. In Mexico, the CNH Foundation joined forces with the Ford Foundation to support the development of water supplies and improve agricultural crops for the Mixtecs of Oaxaca.  Don was fortunate to work with the agriculture experiment station and reserve known as CIMMYT in Mexico, and meet and listen to the teachings of Nobel Laureate Dr. Norman Borlough with Steve Hilton. Dr. Borlough created the "Green Revolution" which was a transformation in agricultural practices between the 1960s and 1990s that doubled world food output and is believed to have saved up to a billion lives worldwide. Borlough began his career in Mexico after the Second World War, developing a new strain of wheat, which he took to other regions of the world along with new strains of rice, corn, and other crops. It was an early version of genetic engineering through cross breeding. Dr. Borlough was deeply involved in both Africa and Mexico. Don says that he retired five times because it took him that many times to learn how to do it. He and Ulli finally left the consulting business and traveled worldwide hunting and fishing in Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Africa, New Zealand, Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, Alaska, and British Columbia. He moved back to Oregon in 2003 to be near his “bride’s” grandchildren. He soon had to have new knees after undergoing six leg surgeries over the decades. Though he is through hunting, he lives along a good trout stream, manages his property and investments, plays tennis daily (if they hit the ball to him), and occasionally tries salmon or steelhead fishing on the great Oregon rivers. He sends Professor Hopson photos of his successes.

ROBERT WALLACE WEBB (1909-1984)

Bob Webb was born in Los Angeles, California, November 2, 1909, attended public schools there, graduating from Hollywood High School in 1926.  He entered the Southern Branch, University of California (now UCLA) in the fall of that year to major in Spanish.  However, he soon fell under the influence of William J. Miller and changed his major to geology.  He moved with the campus to Westwood in 1929, graduated in 1931, and for a brief time attended the University of Washington.  In fall 1931 Bob began graduate study at the California Institute of Technology and received the M.S. degree in June 1932.  During 1932 he also earned a general secondary teaching credential from the University of Southern California.  From 1932 to 1937, Bob simultaneously taught at UCLA and worked toward his PhD at Cal Tech.  The PhD was awarded in 1937, and he accepted a full time appointment at UCLA as Instructor in Geology.

In those days, most UCLA undergraduate geology majors were expected to do a senior thesis, and it was Bob Webb who supervised most of those students. Although graduate studies in geology began at UCLA by 1940, and many of the faculty had begun to devote more and more of their time to research and graduate instruction, Bob believed in the fundamental importance of the undergraduate program and devoted his considerable energy to make it rigorous, soundly grounded, and up to date. Despite the fact that he supervised very few graduate students during his long academic career, he was convinced that a graduate program, once authorized, had to be a quality program, taught by faculty with strong and active research interests. Although graduate studies in geology began at UCLA by 1940, and many of the faculty had begun to devote more and more of their time to researchand graduate instruction, Bob believed in the fundamental importance of the undergraduate program and devoted his considerable energy to make it rigorous, soundly grounded, and up to date.  Despite the fact that he supervised very few graduate students during his long academic career, he was convinced that a graduate program, once authorized, had to be a quality program, taught by faculty with strong and active research interests.

During World War II, Bob became deeply involved in university administration and by 1945 headed the UCLA campus office of Veterans Affairs, and the University-wide office in 1947.  It was chiefly in this capacity that his administrative talents became fully evident.  In those days, the military services executed numerous agreements with the University in connection with the many training programs for officer candidates.  On one occasion, a senior Army Office in charge of training programs in southwestern United States announced that students enrolled in the Army programs at UCLA would henceforth be expected to march between classes.  Bob insisted that that was inappropriate at the University of California, and that the students at UCLA would do no such thing, irrespective of Army sponsorship.  Bob kept then University President Robert Gordon Sproul informed, and President Sproul, for his part, pleased with Bob's forthrightness and understanding of University traditions, gave Bob his full support, and subsequent agreements with the Army included no provision for marching between classes.

In his early days as a regular faculty member at UCLA, he was famed for being the only junior assistant professor to rise on the floor of the Academic Senate to question the judgment of President Sproul.  Sproul, an open and forthright person himself, was quite intrigued by the young, outspoken professor, and the two became life-long friends.

More and more of Bob's time was devoted to University administration during the war years and early post-war years when he was Associate Dean of the College of Letters & Science.  Although he was prepared to give up his research endeavors, he found it a good deal more difficult to put administration ahead of teaching and undergraduate advising.

He watched with interest the entry of the Santa Barbara campus into the University of California system in 1944 and inevitably became acquainted with C. Douglas Woodhouse who taught the entire slate of geology courses offered at Santa Barbara and who also served as campus Veterans Affairs Coordinator.  Bob saw that Santa Barbara offered an attractive opportunity to limit his deepening involvement in administration while simultaneously permitting him to influence strongly the development of a new undergraduate major in geology in a University of California setting.

Bob transferred to Santa Barbara in fall, 1948, despite attempts of his UCLA colleagues to dissuade him.  They suggested that he was throwing away a bright future there, and that he was going to something of an academic backwater at Santa Barbara, a charge that had at least some merit at the time.  Bob, however, foresaw that the opportunities far outweighed any risks and went ahead with the move, bringing with him the University-wide Office of Veterans Affairs, the first University-wide function to be located on the Santa Barbara campus.

By the early 1950's, most of the veterans had come and gone, and the extensive administrative structure serving them was no longer needed by the University.  Instead of resuming full-time teaching at this time, Bob took a leave of absence in 1952-53 and served as Executive Secretary, Division of Geology and Geography, National Research Council, and later Executive Director of the American Geological Institute during its formative days.  These appointments were important and influential positions in Washington, D.C. and could easily have been a permanent career change for Bob, as many of his colleagues at Santa Barbara expected.  But those who knew him best believed that his deep interest in undergraduate teaching as well as his hopes for establishing the geology major would bring him back to Santa Barbara.  He returned in the fall of 1953 to prepare for the campus move to the new Goleta site in the summer of 1954, the second time he experienced a campus move.

Bob played a central role in developing the geology major in 1954, and the first students were graduated in 1956.  By 1960 the Physical Sciences Department (Chemistry, Physics, Geology) under Bob's interim chairmanship, was divided into three new departments.  Bob held numerous Academic Senate positions both at UCLA and later at UCSB.  Among those were Vice-Chairman of the Faculty, Chairman of the Committee on Reinstatement, and member of the Committee on Educational Policy.

Bob's belief in the University of California system was evident by his pride in being able to say that his mother graduated from Berkeley near the turn of the century, that he himself graduated from UCLA, and that all three of his sons graduated from UCSB.  He was very proud that all of his sons earned PhDs and chose education as their careers. Although the science of geology was of great importance to Bob, and he faithfully kept up with its latest developments through professional meetings and leading journals, his own research, which dealt mainly with the mineralogy of California and the geomorphology of the southern Sierra Nevada, was gradually phased out about 20 years before his retirement.  During the last 30 years of his life, he published a number of abstracts and short papers on geologic education, and in 1976 he and long-time colleague Robert M. Norris published Geology of California to fill a need in California's colleges and universities. Bob's principal contributions to the science took a different and rather unusual form for a faculty member in a strong research university.  His influence was on geologists more than on geology.  His influence was so strong, irrespective of context, that many successful geologists today regard themselves as one of Bob's students, even though they may have taken only freshman geology or sophomore mineralogy from him.  Even graduate students who matriculated at other institutions would come under his influence because of a chance meeting in the hallway, on a field trip, or because another faculty member or student referred them to Bob in order to have him solve some bureaucratic problem.  Whatever the reason,

Bob had a direct impact on them as persons and on geological science through these students by instilling attitudes of professional honesty, objectivity, and ethics.  He was the first to open new worlds to many of them as they encountered him in freshman geology perhaps when majoring in chemistry, mathematics or engineering.  By this means Bob recruited many students for lifelong careers in geology.  He opened the eyes of many to the appreciation of their physical environment.

In research universities like UCLA and later UCSB, it is intriguing to find that former graduates, when returning for a visit, always inquire first about Bob Webb even though the last course many had with him was sophomore mineralogy.  Even many of the former graduate students, with whom nearly all Bob's contacts were quite informal, would seek out Bob for a personal chat after transacting the business that brought them to campus.

It is difficult to exaggerate the enormous importance of Bob Webb to the thousands of students who entered his office, met him on a field trip, or sat in his classroom.  Hundreds made life-long career decisions during conversations with him during these encounters.  Hundreds of others were influenced in lesser ways, but nearly all remember their contacts with vividness and appreciation.

As for professional activity, Bob was elected Fellow of the Geological Society of America in 1942.  Although membership in that society was important to him, it was the National Association of Geology Teachers (NAGT), particularly the Far Western Section of which he was a founding member that received the major part of his professional attention.

That the Far Western Section of NAGT is one of its strongest and most active sections is due chiefly to the efforts of Bob Webb.  Although he served once as its president and several times rescued the section from near collapse, he preferred to work as a member of the Executive Committee and as section Historian encouraging, prodding, cajoling others to serve in leadership positions.  It was his inspiration that caused the section to develop and publish a long series of field guides, the sales of which have provided financial stability for the section as well as an important resource for teachers throughout California.  He watched over section by-laws, proposing changes as needed, standardized and codified the duties of the officers, and urged the leaders of the section to plan meetings and activities from five or even ten years in advance.

In 1973 the National Association, in recognition of his long career as an unusually effective teacher of geology and his work with the Far Western Section, conferred on him the Neil Miner Award, the highest award that society can confer for excellence in teaching.  The Far Western Section, also in 1973, established the "Robert Wallace Webb Award" in his honor "for meritorious service to the section and sustained interest in effective Earth science teaching".  Bob Webb was the first winner of this award.

Bob regularly taught the introductory courses in geology and mineralogy as well as the geology of California.

SYEE WELDEAB

Professor Weldeab took his Ph.D. from the University of Tübingen in 2002.  From then to 2005 he was a post-doctoral researcher at the Research Center for Ocean Margins (RCOM), University of Bremen, and then at UCSB until his appointment at there in 2009 as an assistant professor. His research work focuses on  (1) the reconstruction and understanding of past monsoon rainfall variability, (2) thermal, salinity, and productivity history of the oceans, and (3) linkages between tropical oceans and high latitude climate, and their interaction with and effect on the monsoon systems. He uses marine sediment cores that cover time span ranging from orbital scale to anthropogenic, and apply stable and radiogenic isotopes and trace element composition, especially Mg/Ca and Ba/Ca as proxies for past changes in sea surface temperature and past changes in riverine runoff induced-sea surface salinity, respectively.

BILL WISE, Professor Emeritus

Most alumni will remember Bill Wise for teaching them about minerals, by many for guiding them over Pisgah Crater during 104A trips, by some for working with them during summer field camp in the Tahoe/Donner Pass area, and by a select few for co-leading the Volcanology Seminar on three study excursions to Hawaii.  As curator of the Charles Douglas Woodhouse mineral collection, he frequently regaled interested students with world-class specimens during Friday lunch hours.  His picture hangs in the department conference room among those of previous department chairs from 1977 to 1979. Sometimes regarded as the geologist who never ages, Bill was born and raised in Carson City, Nevada, where his father was an engineer for the fabled Virginia & Truckee Railway.  He took his bachelor's degree at Stanford University, and then at Johns Hopkins University he did his 1961 doctoral research on the zeolitic alteration of the Eocene volcaniclastic underpinnings of the Cascade Range of Washington state. Many mineralogists consider Bill to be the world's expert on the occurrences and crystal chemistry of zeolite minerals.  Among his many notable papers liberally sprinkled throughout the mineralogical literature are his descriptions of the first known occurrence of clinoptilolite crystals and of two new zeolite minerals.  He is an expert on vanadium minerals, skarn, and industrial minerals at New Idria and Boron, California.  His work also includes extensive geologic mapping and volcanologic studies of Mt. Hood, Oregon, Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and Pisgah Crater in the Mojave Desert.

Bill taught various courses, including thermodynamics with petrologic applications, mineral paragenesis, and geochemistry.

After retiring from teaching and administrative duties in 1993, Bill wrote the zeolite section of Deer, Howie, and Zussman's 2004 volume 4B of Rock Forming Minerals, Silica Minerals, Feldspathoids, and the Zeolites. Currently, he is a member of the Commission on Natural Zeolites of the International Zeolite Association and a Senior Fellow of the Mineralogical Society of America.

CHARLES DOUGLAS WOODHOUSE (1888-1975)

Professor Woodhouse was born into a family of bankers in Burlington, Vermont, on May 1, 1888. He graduated from Williams College in 1910 with a B.A. degree and from Columbia Law School in 1915 with an LL.B. degree. During World War I he served with the Signal Corps of the U.S. Army. He resumed his law education with an M.A. degree in jurisprudence from the University of California, Berkeley in 1925. By this time, however, his interests in geology, minerals, and mining developed to the point where he decided to make a major change in his professional life. He spent 1925-26 studying mineralogy at the University of Paris. While in Paris he married Muriel Jeffery, his lifelong companion and support. When Woodhouse returned to California, he managed the mining operation in the White Mountains, where Champion Sillimanite, Inc. was obtaining andalusite, the raw material for the spark-plug ceramic. During these ten years he maintained close but informal relationships with the geology departments at UC Berkeley and Stanford University. He also spent part of his time visiting nearly every operating mine in the western United States, amassing a large collection of minerals and ores. Woodhouse began teaching geology and mineralogy informally at Santa Barbara State College in 1938, serving as lecturer without salary. The following year he joined the staff of the Department of Science on a formal basis. In 1948, when a second geologist joined the staff, the enthusiasm in geology was very great--entirely due to the vigor of Woodhouse. From 1942 to 1952 he served in various additional capacities, such as assistant dean and dean of men, and coordinator of veterans affairs for the Santa Barbara campus. Even with these duties, Woodhouse taught full schedule in geology and mineralogy. The major in geology was authorized in 1950, but its installation was postponed to 1954, coincident with the move to the Goleta seashore campus.

Bob Norris recalls: "Woodhouse's field trips were special in a number of ways. Because of his interest and expertise in minerals and mining, they tended to visit good mineral-collecting localities and old mining districts in eastern California and western Nevada. They also included stops at any rock or mineral dealers' shops. Woodhouse evidently knew most of the proprietors of these shops throughout the western United States - and they knew him! Woodhouse would surreptitiously let one students know which specimen he wanted for his personal collection and would tell the student to grab it while Woodhouse diverted the shop keeper's attention. It's pretty certain that Woodhouse would mail a check to the shop-keeper when he got home. Everyone but the students knew this was just a game played out many, many times."

"Woodhouse didn't really care much for camping, so in spite of the distance, he would stay at the nearest motel at day's end. After he had booked the room, he would return to the student camp and would give one of the women his motel key and offer to let any of the women use the showere and towels. He'd wait in camp until the women returned, but only rarely having dinner with the students. Other faculty always stayed in camp with the students."

Woodhouse gave his time to the Santa Barbara community as well. During World War II he taught meteorology at the U.S. Marine base, now the UCSB campus, and was on the advisory board for the Santa Barbara Red Cross. Almost from the time he arrived in Santa Barbara, he supported the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History and served as trustee for decades.

The special honor to a mineralogist is to have his contributions recognized by having a new mineral named after him. That honor was bestowed on Woodhouse in 1937. Woodhouseite, an aluminum sulfate-phosphate, was found with other unusual aluminum minerals during the mineral operation in the White Mountains. This material, described by Dwight Lemon, then a graduate student at Stanford University, is only one example of minerals and locality information that Woodhouse shared with other mineralogists, especially those just getting started in the profession. Of these findings, he kept only the satisfaction of helping someone solve a mineralogic problem.

Following his retirement in 1955, Woodhouse remained intensely interested in geologic education at UCSB. He endowed a fund in 1958, the income from which constitutes an award given each year to the graduating senior of highest excellence. Moreover, he donated his entire collection of more than 10,000 specimens of minerals and ore samples to the Department of Earth Science, to enhance teaching and research in mineralogy. These are the tangible legacies left to the department and campus, but to those who knew him there will remain memories of a generous man, teaching students, who lived life in the hills and the natural world of minerals.

ANDY WYSS

Professor Wyss' BS degree is in biology from UCLA and his PhD is in geology from Columbia University (1989), where he worked through the American Museum of Natural History. He is a field-based vertebrate paleontologist specializing in fossil mammals from the perspective of reconstructing their evolutionary history. His most extensive fieldwork has been carried out in the Andes of central Chile. There, in unusual - from the perspective of fossil hunters-- volcanically derived sediments, he discovered and developed what has emerged as one of the continent's most important archives of mammalian history. Wyss arrived at UCSB in 1989 and has taught primarily courses in paleontology, but also historical geology, physical geology, and introductory field methods.