2015 GSA Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, USA (1-4 November 2015)

Paper No. 196-12
Presentation Time: 11:15 AM

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF E-AN ZEN


SKINNER, Brian, Geology and Geophysics, Yale University, 210 Whitney Avenue, New Haven, CT 06511 and SKINNER, Catherine, Department of Geology and Geophysics, Yale University, Box 208109, New Haven, CT 06520-8109, brian.skinner@yale.edu

Born in 1928, E-an was raised in China by western-educated parents. Following the end of the Japanese war, he accompanied his mother to the United States in 1946, and there studied and excelled for a year at Cambridge High and Latin—his first ever full year of formal schooling. In 1947 E-an enrolled at Cornell, from which his father had graduated in 1916: his mother returned to China to join her husband. Political turmoil prevented E-an from seeing his mother again for more than 30 years.

E-an entered graduate studies at Harvard in 1951; this is where the Skinners met him, where our lifelong friendship began, and where in 1954, E-an was a member of our wedding party. In 1974 Brian was a member of a Yale faculty group invited to visit Chinese centers of higher education. E-an’s mother, by then a widow, lived in Shanghai, and a short visit was permitted, albeit in the presence of a government official. Twenty seven years had passed since the day since Madam Chen had left E-an at Cornell. China had been through a massive revolution and limited correspondence had been through censor-examined letters. Madam Chen had endless questions about her son, by now a distinguished international scientist, but one question was pressing, “Does he have a sense of humor?” Indeed he had a great sense of humor and it stood him in good stead no matter what challenges he faced.

E-an’s PhD thesis on the Taconic Allochthon in Vermont, addressed a problem to which he returned repeatedly through the years, and which he often said was his best piece of work. In many respects E-an was a polymath, and he contributed to many geological topics, but he was particularly interested in scientific education and public communication. Soon after retiring from the USGS in1989 E-an was elected President of the GSA. In his Presidential address, titled “The Citizen-Geologist”, he laid out his thoughts on education and communication by examining the roles that geologists should play in the well-being of the world—all geologists should read his words.

E-an was an exemplary geologist, a great humanist, and a responsible world citizen.