PAUL HELLER AND THE GROWTH OF ANALYTICAL STRATIGRAPHY

It is no coincidence that Paul Heller’s career overlaps almost exactly with the rapid growth of analytical stratigraphy. He was an early leader in using emerging ideas from geodynamics, especially models for thermal and flexural subsidence, as the basis for bold, strikingly simple quantitative models that helped bring stratigraphy out of its descriptive past. Paul had a particular talent for synthesizing these models with ideas from geomorphology and sediment mechanics to understand the full spectrum of basin-filling processes. And his remarkable gift for storytelling helped countless math-phobic geologists see the insight and power of the new approach. Paul Heller’s work was grounded in his unique ability to get to the conceptual heart of mechanistic models, use them to build innovative field campaigns, and ask insightful, big-picture questions. It will endure at the center of one of the great revolutions in stratigraphy.