WILLIAM SPACKMAN - LEADER IN COAL SCIENCE

Dr. William Spackman, Professor Emeritus at The Pennsylvania State University, was one of the most well-known coal geologists in the world; his accomplishments exceeded those of many of his professional colleagues; dozens of professional publications attest to his success. Dr. Spackman began his college education at North Park College in Chicago, where he received the Associate of Arts degree in 1940. He graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Botany from the University of Illinois in 1942 and, during World War II, served at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard applying biological research to marine wood preservation. In 1949 he earned his PhD in Biology with a major in paleobotany from Harvard University, working under Dr. E.S. Barghoorn investigating the characteristics of Vermont’s Brandon Lignite. Dr. Spackman spent the rest of his professional career at Penn State University, where he developed the Coal Research Section of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. He was best known as a coal petrographer and organic geochemist; publications in periodicals such as Fuel and the International Journal of Coal Geology reflected his long association with studies of coal characteristics and utilization. He was also associated with work in the Florida Everglades. He was a proponent of using wetlands as modern analogs to environments of coal accumulation and, in 1964, was senior author of "Environments of Coal Formation in Southern Florida", a field guide published in association with the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America (Spackman and Thompson, 1964). Later, a widely referenced publication appeared in a GSA Special Paper entitled "Geological and Biological Interactions in the Swamp­Marsh Complex of Southern Florida" (Spackman et al., 1969). This established the Everglades as a model wetland for understanding peat accumulation. This effort expanded in 1974 when, with the assistance of Drs. Arthur Cohen, P.H. Given and D.J. Casagrande, a GSA field guide was written entitled "A Field Guidebook to Aid in the Comparative Study of the Okefenokee Swamp and the Everglades-Mangrove Swamp-Marsh Complex of Southern Florida". Dr. Spackman's love of the Everglades never abated, and for many of his students the image of him standing at the helm of the Mariscus as it sped across Florida Bay toward the Everglades is most enduring.