PAUL POTTER AND THE KENTUCKY GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

Although he is well known for his international research on modern beach and big river sands from South America to Siberia as well as contributions to our understanding of Miocene global tectonics, much of Paul Edwin Potter’s research was rooted in the Paleozoic sedimentary rocks and surficial deposits of the North American mid-continent. He was an Ohio native who began his professional geological career at the Illinois State Geological Survey and, as a professor at Indiana University and the University of Cincinnati, collaborated with colleagues at the Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky state surveys over six decades. Paul was an author or co-author of 24 Kentucky Geological Survey publications that included traditional reports and stratigraphic sections; large format documents combining text, line art, and photographs to illustrate complicated structural and stratigraphic relationships; and publications about landslides and the geology of the Cincinnati area intended for non-technical audiences. The publications for non-technical audiences reflected Paul’s commitment to public service that aligned well with the KGS mission and, more broadly, the land grant mission of the University of Kentucky. He also contributed 355 carefully documented outcrop photographs to the survey’s geologic image database. In recognition of his contributions to Kentucky geology, the survey presented Paul with a plaque declaring him the “best unpaid KGS employee” in 2007 shortly after KGS published the second edition of his Exploring the Geology of the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Region. All of Paul's scientific contributions to KGS are available to download from the survey’s website.