PETE BIRKELAND: GEOLOGICAL HERITAGE AND LEGACY (Invited Presentation)

Arriving at Univ. Colorado (CU) 55 years ago, both Pete Birkeland (new Professor) and I (new grad student) first met during the fall 1967 semester at CU’s Department of Geological Sciences. I had arrived at CU with the intention of studying either structure/tectonics or groundwater hydrogeology, but my maverick instincts rebelled at the former (the popular fad was the new “global tectonics”), while the latter raised my luddite hackles by seeming to require marriage to newly developing computer technology. I was converted to field geomorphology by the duo of Pete Birkeland and Bill Bradley (who ultimately became my Ph.D. advisor). I took all of Pete’s grad courses, and our connections subsequently continued through independent research studies, my Ph.D. research project, and visits to field areas in Washington state and Texas (where in 1971 I began my own academic career at UT-Austin). Along with Bill, Pete inculcated me with habits of geological thinking that sustained my professional life for more than half a century.

All former students of Pete Birkeland are beneficiaries of special legacy, one that derives from an amazing heritage, involving a succession of geological luminaries extending back in time to the origins of modern geology in the late 18^th century. There is a kind of subtle influence from advisor/mentors to student, who then became advisor/mentor, etc. This conveyed a tradition of style and method for the doing of geological science. In reverse chronological order the succession of students-to-advisors/mentors is as follows: Pete Birkeland and Bill Bradley; Arthur D. Howard (1906-1986) and J. Hoover Mackin (1905-1968); Douglas Johnson (1878-1944); William Morris Davis (1850-1934); Nathaniel Southgate Shaler (1841-1906); Louis Agassiz (1807-1873); Baron Georges Cuvier (!769-1832); and Abraham Gottlob Werner (1749-1817). The list includes key founders of the science of geology; educators famous for their Socratic teaching styles and for “teaching through example;” plus key intellects who formulated important philosophical and methodological tenets of geology.