Rocknocker: A Geologist’s Memoir. George Devries Klein

I preferred to wait until I was earning a living and could afford to support a wife. He replied, “Mr. Klein, a wife will be a handy thing to have around when you need your thesis typed.” At Yale everything was formal and faculty did not address students by their first name until they passed the first year comprehensive general written exam and were approved to return for their second year.

      After a week of preparation, the eight of us who were new took the rock, mineral, and fossil tests and edited a piece of geological prose. I was never told outcomes but assumed I passed because those who didn’t were told to retake them a month later.

      The next afternoon I registered for courses, but this was handled by the department. I met with the entire faculty, was introduced by Joe Gregory, and selected the following courses: Geomorphology and Pleistocene Geology (Flint), Stratigraphy (Dunbar and Sanders), Mineralogy (Winchell) in the fall and Petrology (Walton) in the spring. I was assigned as a TA to teach “Science II” a general geology course for non-scientists taught by Flint.

      By this time, the other graduate students were back. I made friends with Chuck Ross (BS, MS, Colorado; Paleontology, Dunbar), Don Eicher (BS, MS, Nebraska; Paleontology, Waage), Lee McAlester (BS, SMU; paleontology, Dunbar), Art Bloom (BS, Miami of Ohio, MS, Otago; Geomorphology, Flint), George Moore (BS, MS, Stanford; Sedimentology, Sanders), Chuck Ellis (BS. University of Texas, Austin; sedimentology, Sanders), and Dick Heimlich (BS, Rutgers, petrology, Walton). I maintained contact with many of them throughout my career.

      Ross worked at the Illinois Geological Survey, Western Washington University and Chevron. He became an internationally-renowned fusulinid micropaleontologist and was the first to propose Pennsylvanian and Permian sea level curves. Eicher went on to teach at Colorado.

      Art Bloom taught at Yale for one year and then accepted a faculty appointment at Cornell. He was one of the first to evaluate uplift rates, choosing an area in Papua-New Guinea where uplifted coral terraces were exposed and datable. George Moore was on leave from the U.S.G.S and returned there. Chuck Ellis went to work with Conoco Research, moved to Sinclair Research, and after Sinclair’s merger with ARCO, worked for a small company in Colorado. He died in a plane crash in 1969. Heimlich taught at Kent State for his entire career.

      Of these, George Moore clearly had extensive (five years) research experience with the U.S.G.S. George played the role of mentor very well, always emphasizing that “an idea was the most important thing.” As scientists, we should focus on new hypotheses, new ideas, and challenge existing paradigms. Because he also lived in the Hall of Graduate Studies, meals with him turned into seminars discussing many current paradigms of geology and what was weak about them. It was as much a learning experience as we obtained in the classroom. Those discussions taught me the importance of tying one’s research to the major themes and paradigms of geology, contribute to their understanding, and utilizing new observations and analysis to challenge them.

      He also advised something else. If one can’t complete a project in five years, it’s not worth pursuing. In general this is true for work involving projects completely on land. In areas of coastal restriction, such as those with high tides, lack of available field time prolongs the investigation. When undertaking marine geology, it takes longer because of limited ship availability, or availability of particular data sources such as provided by the Ocean Drilling Program which may not drill in certain areas for four or five years. One compensates in such situations by undertaking different projects simultaneously.

      Art Bloom and I worked together during the first semester because he was the head TA for Science II. He spent a year as a Fulbright Scholar in New Zealand and I drew on that experience.

      I met two recent PhD’s, William B.N. Berry (Paleontology, Dunbar) and V. Rama Murthy (BS, Madras, petrology, Walton) who dropped by to visit. Bill Berry eventually joined the paleontology department at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB). Rama, after a bad year in India where he saw no future, returned to the USA, completed a post doc at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, and went to the University of Minnesota. He eventually became department head, dean of the college, and Vice President of Academic affairs there.

      Because Rama was from India, I asked how he adjusted to the US. He (and one of his friends) told me the following:

      He arrived at Yale in 1954 and soon was recognized by the faculty as a promising student. His faculty advisor, Walton, suggested he map an area in Vermont for his PhD thesis because the Vermont Geological Survey only had a state geologist on staff. The Vermont Geological Survey devised a way to geologically map the state by hiring geology graduate students to map in the summer for their thesis work, and provided a paltry salary, all expenses, and field equipment. Each student provided their own car.

      Rama neither had a car, nor knew how to drive. Buying a car was easy. Yale's geology department had a fund (donated by a wealthy alum) to buy used field cars for graduate students with the understanding that when field work was completed, the fund was reimbursed for whatever price the car sold. Rama was voted funds to buy a car and his friends helped him.

      The driving lessons were a little more complicated. Alan Bateman a retired faculty member who was independently wealthy paid for Rama's driving lessons. Rama passed his driver's license test.

      Rama wrote his family in India (from the old “Brahman” caste) and told them about his good fortune since coming to America. Not only did he buy a car six months after arriving but also one of the professors paid for his driving lessons.

      About six weeks later, his mother wrote back, "Well Rama, that's very nice that Yale University paid for your car. But tell me, who pays for the chauffeur?"

      The next day, I saw a notice written on the Bulletin Board in French about the French language exam. It was scheduled for the following Saturday. I took it and Rodgers told me that I completed a perfect translation but it was too short. I would have to take it again a month later and increase the amount translated. I did, and this time I passed but I had made mistakes because he wanted more volume. Three days later, a notice appeared in German and when I met with Sanders afterwards, it was a repeat of the experience with the French exam, and I passed on my second try. Within a month, I had crossed off all the first set of hurdles (rock, mineral, fossil tests, editing test, both language exams).

      Because Flint’s and the Dunbar-Sanders courses required term papers and Winchell required an independent project, I knew I had to spread them out. If I didn’t everything would catch up with me at the end of the year, something I wanted to avoid. One picked a topic according to the lecture schedule and as I looked at the course outline, I noticed that in mid-October, the stratigraphy course scheduled a lecture on cyclothems. I picked that topic. That meant I not only had to complete the final paper, but also present a lecture to the class at the scheduled time. Dunbar was extremely pleased with both the written paper and the class presentation as was John Sanders. What was unknown to me was that the faculty shared student progress during a weekly luncheon. Consequently, I had a head start in terms of positive perceptions.

      Geology graduate students would take coffee breaks every day at a nearby restaurant, George and Harry’s, at 10 am, 3 PM and 9 PM. Karl Turekian (being single) usually joined us and often converted them into geochemistry seminars.

      The only grade recorded at the end of the first semester was Mineralogy where I earned a “High Pass” (equivalent to a B plus). The following semester I took Walton’s petrology course with a required laboratory where one had to describe 40 thin sections with a petrographic microscope. In the past, students resisted and only completed about half. I set to work and did them all which student colleagues did not appreciate, but Walton also gave me a “High Pass” which he seldom did for those who were not his students.

      Towards the end of the first semester, I noticed a group of graduate students who were most unhappy with Yale’s geology graduate program. One was Lucian Platt (BS Yale, Structural Geology with Rodgers) who had more money than most people. He was self-supporting, arrived every morning at 9:00 am in his Mercedes, and started the day reading the Wall Street Journal. He married a Swiss lady from a prominent family whom he met while on active duty in the U.S. Army in Germany, and managed her finances too. The others were Cy Field (BS Dartmouth, economic geology), John Cotton (BS Dartmouth, petrology),