Rocknocker: A Geologist’s Memoir. George Devries Klein
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who directed the Texas Bureau of Economic Geology, William H. Twenhofel a professor at both the University of Kansas and the University of Wisconsin, Samuel Williston, a professor at both the University of Kansas and later the University of Chicago, Paul D. Krynine, a pioneering sedimentary petrologist who taught at Pennsylvania State University, and Tom Nolan, Director of the USGS, amongst numerous others. I realized when admitted to the PhD geology program at Yale, I was walking on hallowed American geological ground and it required a strong commitment on my part to attempt to live up to the reputation of my forebears.
Prior to moving to Yale, I read materials they sent me. It included a letter of welcome, a statement about wisdom and maturity, and instructions. As a new student, I was expected to pass before registration a series of rock, mineral and fossil identification tests and a test on editing based on the U.S. Geological Survey publication “Suggestion to Authors.” I read that publication over the summer. To pass the other three tests, I arrived a week earlier and examined the Yale teaching collections.
I also obtained information about the faculty. My advisor was John E. Sanders. He earned a BA in geology from Ohio Wesleyan University where he was captain and quarterback of the football team and student body president. He earned his PhD at Yale and completed a post-doctoral fellowship with Ph. H. Kuenen at the University of Groningen, a leading sedimentologist who developed the turbidite concept. Sanders returned to Yale in 1955.
Richard F. Flint was now department chairman. He earned all his degrees from the University of Chicago. His expertise was Quaternary and glacial geology and had written the definitive textbook (at that time) on it. He was widely known for his research and an internationally-recognized scholar in the field.
John Rodgers was considered a rising star in structural geology. He earned his undergraduate degree at Cornell and PhD from Yale. Before returning to Yale, he worked with the U.S.G.S.
At the Peabody Museum, three faculty members comprised the paleontological side of the department. Carl Dunbar was director of the museum and an expert in Fusulinidae. Dunbar earned his BS in geology from Kansas. His father was the first farmer in Douglas County, KS, to use a mechanized tractor in 1911. Carl earned his PhD at Yale with the legendary Charles Schuchert and after two years at the University of Minnesota returned as Schuchert’s successor. Karl Waage was a Mesozoic paleontologist and stratigrapher. He earned his PhD from Princeton and worked at the U.S.G.S. before coming to New Haven. Joseph Gregory, now graduate advisor, was a Vertebrate Paleontologist focusing on dinosaurs and earned all his degrees from the University of California at Berkeley (UCB).
Other faculty in the department included Matt Walton, a petrologist with a Columbia PhD, Leroy Jensen, an economic geologist with a PhD from M.I.T., Karl Turekian, a geochemist who earned a BS at Wheaton College and a PhD from Columbia, and Horace Winchell, a mineralogist with a Harvard PhD.
From the outside, it looked like a powerhouse faculty.
Graduate students were expected to complete a core program of a year of Geomorphology and Pleistocene Geology (Flint), a year of Structural Geology (Rodgers), a year of Stratigraphy (Dunbar and Sanders), a semester of Mineralogy (Winchell) and a semester of Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology (Walton). Other courses could be taken as electives.
To earn a PhD, one was also expected to pass a Comprehensive General written exam administered during spring vacation of the first year, a Qualifying combined written and oral exam during the second year if one had entered with a Master’s degree, or the third year if one entered with a BS degree, and a thesis defense. PhD candidates were required to pass two language exams administered by the department. Sanders administered the German exam and Rodgers the French exam. To advance from the first year to the second, one was required to earn a grade of “Honors” (equivalent to an “A”) in at least one’s year’s worth of course work.
All this was spelled out in no uncertain terms in the materials they sent me at the beginning of the summer. They were marching orders for success to complete their graduate program and to ignore them invited disaster.
In short, Yale had a structured program. Graduate students were on their own. It was not exactly a student-friendly environment and mentoring was unheard of. One was expected to be mentored before arrival or figure out where to get it. Fortunately in my case, the two years at Kansas prepared me to hit the ground running, and in the end, it paid off. I have often said that without the two years at Kansas, I would never have completed the PhD program at Yale.
I made the operational decision that the next three years were to be focused on course work, thesis research and passing critical exams. To do so, I carefully scheduled my hours in an appointment book on a weekly basis, and stuck to them. There would be little room for social life. It also meant be nice to everyone to the extent you could, avoid arguments, and stay focused. One of the graduate students who I got to know well, Dick Heimlich (BS Rutgers, petrology; Kent State University), once commented that few do it that way at Yale. I replied I would adjust as I saw how things developed. One could always scale down, but it would hard to rescale up again. In short, I chose to work for three years in a focused manner.
Because the written Comprehensive and the Qualifying written and oral exams were administered at the end of spring vacation, I knew I had to begin reviewing for both on January 2, well before each exam.
I arrived at Yale immediately after Labor Day, rented a room, and went to the department in Kirtland Hall, an old brownstone building. I selected a vacant office carrel in a room with 16 such carrels (it was called the “Rats Nest”), and started looking at the collections. In the process, I met Waage, Flint, Winchell, Gregory and Walton. Two weeks later, I was able to get room and board at the Hall of Graduate Studies, a better arrangement, and moved immediately.
Slowly, other first year students arrived. One earned a geology degree and then went to theology school, didn’t like it and tried geology again. He flunked out at the end of the semester. A second student from India was gone by the end of the year.
A third, David Doan (BS, MS Penn State), was on leave from the Military Geology Branch of the U.S.G.S. where he acquired extensive experience in the Pacific mapping many of the islands that comprised the ‘island hopping’ strategy of World War II. I learned a lot from him, but in November, he returned to the U.S.G.S. While in Guam, he married a lady who was previously married successively to two Air Force pilots. Both died in plane crashes. When Dave arrived, she made a play for him hoping to get back stateside. She also had two children, and was clearly “high maintenance,” having lived on military bases where living costs were cheap and she could afford a maid. The adjustment to life as a graduate student wife on a fellowship was difficult for her.
Dave invested in the stock market but lost money. He tried commodity investments which did not work out. So he left. It was a great loss because he shared his extensive geological experience with us.
The other five members of our “entry class” eventually earned PhD’s. First to arrive after me was Peter Robinson (BS, Yale, MS, University of New Mexico) who completed his PhD in Vertebrate Paleontology with Gregory and took a job at the University of Colorado Museum. Then Steve Porter (BS, Yale) arrived. He returned from service on an Aircraft Carrier in the Pacific fleet. He showed me his slides from Japan, Korea, the Philippines and Australia and it made me want to visit (and revisit) these places. Steve lived in the Hall of Graduate Studies and we became close friends. During his second year he married one of Turekian’s lab techs so I saw less of him. He went to the University of Washington and made a life-long career there, becoming director of their Quaternary Institute.
Tom Williams (BS, Dickinson, MS, SMU) studied with Dunbar in paleontology and returned to teach at SMU. Last to arrive was Roger Ames (BA, Williams College, 2 years U.S. Army service in Korea) who earned his PhD with Leroy Jensen in economic geology. He joined the Amoco Research Lab in Tulsa where he worked in organic geochemistry.
We initially had the building to ourselves because everyone was still away doing field work. The only returning student was Mike Carr (BS, Imperial College, University of London). Mike was a geochemistry grad student and made his career at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park.
I visited Joe Gregory to let him know I was there. During our meeting