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Chapter 7

Yale University and Nova Scotia (1957-1960)

Yale University was originally founded in 1701 as the “Collegiate School.” The name was changed to Yale University when a Welsh merchant, Elihu Yale, donated proceeds from the sale of 17 bales of goods, and a portrait of King George I to endow the institution. He did so on the condition that they change their name to reflect his bountiful generosity.

Yale is the third oldest institution of higher learning in the USA and over time grew in stature and reputation. The Yale geology department awarded the first American PhD in the field to William North Rice, a Wesleyan University graduate who returned there to teach (Chapter 4). The Yale geology department had many renowned scholars on its faculty including Othneil Marsh, a vertebrate paleontologist, Charles Schuchert, an eighth-grade self-educated paleontologist who earlier assisted the legendary James Hall, Benjamin Silliman, a mineralogist, and James Dwight Dana, a mineralogist who also published in the field of tectonics.

Prior to 1950, famous geologists teaching there included Chester R. Longwell in structural geology, Allan Bateman, who discovered the Kennecott Mine, in economic geology, Adolph Knopf in petrology, Carl Dunbar in paleontology and stratigraphy, and Richard Foster Flint, a quaternary geologist. Dunbar, who retired in 1959, and Flint were, in effect, my only contact with Yale’s illustrious past, although I met Bateman and Longwell. Flint was much younger than the other three and retired in 1971.

Yale geology graduates were amongst many leaders in the field. They included Stuart Weller, a professor at the University of Chicago, Edward Sellars 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 he asked if I was married and I told him 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), Dick Berry (BS Williams, petrology), Jim Allen (BS, Toronto, economic geology) and Ernie Dechaw (BS Witwatersrand, South Africa, economic geology). I ignored them and whenever they complained to me, I responded, “Look, I just got here. I’m a mere wheat kernel blown in from Kansas during the last tornado.” John Sanders told me that summer that the faculty was aware of their carping, and enjoyed my response.

I’ll always remember Jim Allen’s last day at Yale. When he gave his PhD thesis defense presentation and passed, he immediately left the building. His wife met Jim at the front door. She had sat in their car during his defense with all their belongings and they left right then and there.

At the end of spring vacation, I took the written comprehensive exam and passed. When the semester ended, I earned “Honors” grades in both Flint’s course and the stratigraphy course. I was awarded the Sterling Fellowship by the graduate school for the next year. It included a tuition and fee waiver, and paid enough to live on, or as one of my friends put it, “starve graciously”.

During the academic year, we had a weekly colloquium. One of the speakers in February, 1958, was Dr. L. M. J. U. Van Straaten from the University of Groningen, Netherlands. We read his papers on the tidal flats of the Dutch Wadden Sea in the stratigraphy course. Sanders arranged for me to meet him to show some slides from the Bay of Fundy, but he wasn’t interested. Sanders and the stratigraphy class took him on a field trip to the Connecticut coast and he did not mix with the graduate students. We concluded that graduate students were of no interest to him. That attitude cost him dearly later when the Dutch government closed the department of geology at the University of Groningen during the early 1970’s.

When classes ended, I took a field trip led by Carl Dunbar to all the major North American Paleozoic type sections in New York State. It was a memorable experience with Dunbar recounting many stories about the pioneer paleontologists who worked there and also saw some excellent geology.

The day after the term ended, everyone undertaking thesis field work was expected to leave for our field areas. I left on returning from Dunbar’s field trip.

I returned to Nova Scotia, settling in Digby to complete field work at the south end of the Annapolis Valley. Once that was completed, I returned to Hants County and worked east towards Truro in Cobequid Bay. NSRF continued my support, but the NSDM said they would send me monthly payments. After receiving the first check, they terminated funds for all US geologists supported under the arrangement with M.I.T. When John Sanders visited to provide field thesis supervision, I explained the funding cut off. John advised I write Flint for a supplemental grant. Flint sent a check a week later from the Donnell Foster Hewitt fund.

Sanders and I visited all critical locations. He observed other things that were outside my thesis topic and suggested I do research on them. I realized if I did, I would never finish. He did suggest that I expand my reconnaissance of Bay of Fundy intertidal zone sediments which I did and in time this paid off. If I learned anything from John it was that one should take advantage of all the research opportunities an area offered.

At the end of the summer, I returned to Yale. Fifteen new graduate students were enrolled, including one third without financial aid. Flint mentioned that enrollments increased because of the recession. Half of these new students were gone by the end of the year.

I developed a friendship with B. Clark Burchfiel (BS, MS, Stanford, Structural Geology) who later became a professor at Rice University and moved in 1975 to M.I.T. Later, Clark was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences and served on the Board of Directors of Maxus Oil Company. He is the recipient of the 2009 Penrose Medal, the highest award of the Geological Society of America. I also met Gil Benson (BS, MS, Stanford, Structural Geology) who had an educational leave from Texaco. He taught me a lot about the operational side of an oil company. He taught at Portland State University.

Also in that class was Brock Powers (BS, Southern California). He was on a fully-paid leave from Aramco to earn a PhD on Aramco data because he was to be their next chief of geological research. His predecessor was ill and Brock was picked to replace him. Aramco required their research directors to have earned PhD’s. Brock made a tour of the US geology PhD programs to find which would accept a thesis on Saudi Aramco’s data on Saudi Arabian petroleum geology. Yale was the only university to agree with this stipulation. Brock worked under Sanders’ supervision on carbonate petrology of the "Arab D” reservoir at the famous Ghawar field. Once a month, a team came from the Aramco office in New York to meet with him.

I reconnected with another member of the entry class, Ed. Belt (BA Williams, MS, Harvard). Ed was a TA at the M.I.T field camp in 1956 where we met. After service in the army, he decided to go to Yale to work with John Sanders. Ed and I spent a lot of time together reviewing common interests. Ed taught first at Villanova, and then at Amherst College.

Also among that group was Larry Ashmead (BS, MS, Rochester, petrology) who was terminated after two years and became a senior editor with Random House. Ed Hansen (BA, Princeton, structural geology) was a late arrival after the rock and mineral exams were completed. Ed was a bright guy (probably the brightest of all the graduate students) but lacked discipline. He finished his PhD, earned a Post-doc at the Geophysical Laboratory, and then left geology to become an artist in Greenwich Village. He died young.

Ashmead and Hansen palled around with Mike Carr, and ingratiated themselves with John Rodgers. Neither Hansen nor Ashmead were comfortable with my self-disciplined approach to graduate work partly modeled after my perceptions of Ray Moore’s work style. They thought it unscholarly. The three spent considerable time talking about contemporary literature at the Hall of Graduate Studies dining hall. Whatever their concerns, clearly my determined working style learned from Ray Moore put them off.

I enrolled in Structural Geology with Rodgers, invertebrate Paleontology with Dunbar, and thesis credits. The structure course was difficult because we had to translate a book by Jean Goguel written in French. The paleontology course was problematic because it required a lot more memory than I could to handle. I passed both courses.

At the end of spring break, I took the written part of my qualifying exam and my orals a week later. Sanders asked questions to start the exam and focused on topics that he knew with which I would do well. Next was Gregory who asked questions in an off-putting monotone. After adjusting, I answered them. Rodgers was next and I answered his questions. Walton was the last member of the committee and I had difficulty understanding his questions. I passed, but felt I could have performed better. Walton said as he left the room after the committee vote, “George you did very well.” Cy Field told me later that Jensen told him I had scored the highest on the written qualifying exam because I had also done well on the section on economic geology in addition to fields I knew. Jensen was unaware I completed three semesters of economic geology with Hambleton.

Because of funding uncertainties in Nova Scotia, I applied for a Penrose Grant from the Geological Society of America (GSA) for $2,800.00. Bob Shrock at M.I.T chaired the committee that year and GSA awarded me $2,000.00. When the grant list was published, I received the largest grant nationwide and more than Ernst Cloos at Johns Hopkins, and the famous stratigrapher, G. Marshall Kay, a distinguished professor at Columbia.

Near the end of the year, we received notices about our financial aid package. Mine was cut because of my less than stellar performance in paleontology and structural geology, and I wondered how I could make it. It consisted of a tuition and fee waiver and a quarter time assistantship teaching field methods with Gil Benson as instructor. Tom Williams’ funding was also cut, and because he had a wife and two children to support and the GI Bill didn’t cover all of it, he accepted a faculty appointment at SMU. However, it delayed his PhD by three years, which had a negative cascading effect on his subsequent career.

I read a posted notice about a faculty opening at Willimantic State College in Willimantic, CT, and discussed applying for it with Joe Gregory. He told me every grad student took some cuts because endowment income dropped in a recession climate. He added that my situation was unlike Tom Williams who had a family to support. If I needed to borrow money from Yale, Gregory offered to countersign the loan. His comment was a morale and confidence builder. I took his advice.

I returned to Nova Scotia and finished my field work. Around Labor Day, I returned to Yale knowing all I had to do was complete lab work and write my thesis. My goal was in sight.

I still needed additional funds. Art Bloom was now on the faculty and taught Science II. He hired me to grade exams. I discovered that the Law School dining room offered waiterships. If one waited on tables for one meal, one received three free meals a day. I applied and took the breakfast shift until December. Flint arranged a private office for me in an adjacent building where the department had empty office space.

Because I worked exclusively on my thesis, I had fewer interactions with the entering class than during previous years. I met Pierre Biscaye (BS, Wheaton College) who worked with Karl Turekian and became a senior scientist at Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory of Columbia University, Terry Offield (BS, Virginia Tech, MS. Univ. of Illinois) who worked with John Rodgers and returned to the USGS from where he took an educational leave, and Brad Hall (BS, Univ. of Maine, MS. Brown), who worked with John Rodgers and John Sanders and then taught at the University of Maine.

Yale drew geology students from all over the USA and many parts of the world. Yale was a national university in the geosciences. It was a unique place with a great faculty, good equipment, outstanding library resources, and outstanding collections. What it lacked then was a decent geology building. Kirtland Hall was a late 19^th century period piece that needed major renovation or replacement if Yale remained competitive during the rest of the 20^th century and beyond. The department moved into a new building in 1964.

The annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in 1959 was held in Pittsburgh, PA. I presented my first scientific paper to a professional society dealing with the sedimentary structures in the Blomidon Formation. I characterized it as a lake deposit and explained why.

The speaker before me was Louis M. Cline of the University of Wisconsin who tried to present a 10 minute paper on Carboniferous turbidites of the Ouachita fold belt with 40 slides shown in parallel on two screens using two projectors. In those days, slides were manually placed into and extracted from metal holders and pushed in and out. The union projectionist was having a difficult time. I handed him my slides for a single screen.

While Cline talked, I introduced myself to the session chair and told him I might need more than ten minutes. By this time, Cline had already passed 16 minutes and the session chairman assured me that I could take all the time I needed.

As I walked to the podium, I saw Ray Moore walk into the room where the session was held. That gave me a real morale boost because I knew how busy he was, yet he was willing to come hear the first paper presented by a former classroom student who left Kansas.

I presented the paper and Bruce Heezen (BS, Iowa, PhD Columbia, marine geology; Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory), the eminent marine geologist at Columbia’s Lamont Doherty Geological Observatory, commented that this was an important paper because lakes acted dynamically like ocean basins and I proved it. I thanked him for his remarks.

I ran into Moore later that evening and with his usual expressionless face, he said, “Klein that was an excellent paper. Keep up the good work.” John Sanders was with me when he made that comment. Both Moore and Heezen literally made my day.

Steadily, I worked on my thesis. I wrote two chapters at night while in the field and Sanders’ critiqued the drafts. By January, I finished lab work and only had to write the remainder of the thesis. The faculty changed thesis submittal ground rules and sent a memo stating that candidates had to turn in final drafts by March 10 for the committee to review and make changes in order to graduate in June, 1960. Once cleared, we revised, got the thesis bound and defended.

Basically, I wrote my thesis in a month. I wrote a chapter and drafted illustrations from Monday through Sunday working steadily from 8:00 am until midnight. Sanders always was away from his office, so I checked his teaching schedule. He taught an 8:00 am class and at 8:45 am on Monday, I was at his classroom door. When class was over, I handed him a chapter. To his credit, he reviewed it immediately and returned the draft with suggested changes by 2 PM that afternoon. It was hard work, but I finished in time and turned the final draft of my thesis in to John who then circulated it to the committee.

John Rodgers was on sabbatical in Paris in 1960, and his place was taken by a visiting professor, S. Warren Carey (PhD, Sydney; structural geology and tectonics) from the University of Tasmania. Carey was controversial in science and behavior and within a month of arrival, antagonized the entire faculty and most of the graduate students.

Carey replaced Rodgers on my committee and after reading my thesis draft, he asked me to meet him on a Saturday morning in mid-March to review it. His office was on the third floor of Kirtland Hall. Carey spoke with a booming voice that was heard all over the building. We discussed the thesis. We reached a point when he said to me, “Look young man, if you want to be impertinent, you can take your thesis and go.” I told him no impertinence was intended, suggested that because the issue was in petrology, why not defer the matter to Walton who was also on the committee, and would read the thesis next. He agreed.

We finished our discussion and I went down the stairs not knowing I attracted an audience. The “Rats Nest” was on the second floor and Burchfiel, Benson, Ashmead, Carr, Hansen, Field, Platt, and Ames were at the door having heard Carey’s remarks about impertinence. As I approached they burst into applause.

I met with Walton and he sustained my position on the issue Carey had raised.

During the year, I looked for a job in a research university. I was interviewed at Brown University and the University of South Carolina. Alonzo Quinn, the chairman at Brown, wrote they hired someone else, but stated that “your talk was presented in a masterful way.” South Carolina verbally offered me the job but retracted it a week later. Jobs were few during the 1959-60 recession.

With no academic job offers, I decided to look for a job at an oil company research lab. I interviewed with Conoco’s Research lab but they hired Charlie Ellis. The American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) held its annual meeting in Atlantic City in Mid-April, so I attended. I was offered a job with Lion Oil, and interviewed with Pan American Research. The Pan-Am representatives assured me an offer would be made but I found out later that the lab management fired A. F. Frederickson, Vice President of geological research, and hiring was frozen.

My conversation with the Pan-Am people had an eaves-dropper, Bernie Rolfe of Sinclair Research Tulsa, OK. He wrote a letter inviting me to apply. I did. Nearly two weeks after my thesis defense I was flown to Tulsa, interviewed, and left with a letter of offer in hand. I accepted starting on September 15, 1960.

When returning to New Haven, I received startling news. Ashmead failed his qualifying written and oral exam and was told to leave. Rogers wasn’t around to save him, and Walton didn’t back him. A year earlier, Hansen failed the comprehensive written exam but was given a reprieve and passed on his second attempt. It made him a little more focused.

My thesis defense was in the middle of May, 1960. The format at Yale was one presented a 45 minute talk followed by a 15 minute question period. Then the faculty voted in committee. Two defenses were held each day. Gregory, as graduate advisor, introduced each candidate.

On the day of my defense, Lucian Platt defended first. He gave his talk about structural geology in the Taconic region in New York. It was acceptable research. However, he and Carey had reached a major disagreement, and Carey started going after him hard. After five minutes, Flint stood up and turned to Carey (who was to Flint’s left and behind him a few seats over) and said, “Mr. Carey, perhaps you may not know that in an American University we allow a student the latitude to develop any hypothesis and interpretation they chose. As a faculty we must see if that student can properly defend it with facts and a reasonable analysis and careful thought. Mr. Platt has done so.” Flint sat down and there were no more questions.

I was then introduced by Gregory and walked to the podium to give my thesis defense lecture. It was a bitter-sweet moment. I presented talks in that lecture hall for Journal Club, introduced a colloquium speaker, attended colloquia and previous PhD thesis defenses, and was facing my collective professors and graduate student colleagues as a group for the last time. I proceeded to give my talk. It went smoothly having presented it at two interviews and having practiced it.

I also spent time anticipating questions beforehand and organized some slides which were coded with a batch number so they could be shown if an anticipated question came up. Ed Belt projected my slides and I showed him what was needed if relevant questions arose.

The question period started and I anticipated the first one. I said, “I can answer that with a few slides. Ed, Batch 2.” Everyone laughed, and I answered the question. Then Carey and asked me an arcane question about my fault mapping. He was on my right, my map was hung on a wall to my left in the far corner of the room and I knew he probably couldn’t see the details. I walked over there and in a fashion reminiscent of how Ray Moore pointed at a map, I pointed to a spot. I asked Carey if that was where he saw a problem. He said, “Yes.” I then said, “Well, Sir, if you could come over here I can show that . . .” and proceeded to explain it. Flint looked at me and he had an unusual nonverbal way of showing approval and also smiled (because Carey was behind him) giving that nonverbal signal as I answered. My answer satisfied Carey. Turekian, who had cross words with Carey earlier that year, asked about red-gray color changes, and I told Ed Belt to go to another batch and showed more slides. Karl was satisfied. There were no more questions and we adjourned.

Flint told me I had given the best defense he had ever seen by a Yale PhD during the 27 years he had been there. That too made my day.

I waited outside the lecture hall while the faculty met in a conference room across the hall. After three minutes, Sanders came out and congratulated me. He then returned to the conference room and eventually they passed Platt as well.

Several days later, I drove to Dartmouth College for an interview. On arrival, they told me that they hired a clay mineralogist, so I returned to New Haven, checked my watch, and went to George and Harry’s. That evening, only Karl Turekian came and I told him about my wasted trip to Dartmouth. He said, “George when interviewing, you must understand they don’t know what they want. We just interviewed three geophysicists, all good people, and we can’t decide what we want. What you need to do is not go as a candidate. Go as a consultant trying to find out what the department needs and then show them how you fill that need.” I used that advice many times later in life.

Karl then asked if I was attending commencement and I told him that Yale could mail me the degree. He explained that graduation is for the parents and I owed it to them, particularly with my immigrant background. He explained he missed his PhD graduation ceremony because a research cruise left three days before. His mother raised him and his sister as a single parent. She worked scrubbing floors at Altman’s department store, had looked forward to seeing her son march in the graduation procession, and be awarded his PhD from Columbia. She never forgave him.

I called my parents and they said they would come. I got their tickets, arranged to rent a cap and gown, and on June 13, 1960, received my PhD. However, my father went to Europe on a critical business trip three days earlier. I caught up with him ten days later in Paris.

I was now ready to make a career in research geology.

LESSONS LEARNED:

1. When things go well, don’t rest on your laurels. I took a slightly more relaxed approach my second year and it created some financial difficulties my third year.

2. Even though my third year was financially tight, I never gave up on my goal to earn a PhD in geology from Yale.

3. When things were financially tight my third year, I looked for alternative ways to finance my education by knitting together other work for which I was paid in cash or in kind.

4. Always seek alternative ways to stay on course. My GSA grant my last field season was a better arrangement than what the Nova Scotia government awarded me in previous years.

5. Always tie one’s research to the major themes and paradigms of geology, contribute to their understanding, and utilize new observations and analysis to challenge and improve them.

6. Take advantage of every research opportunity an area offers.

7. During job interviews, always assume the potential employer is looking at you for guidance in their decision and by doing so, they are more likely to offer a position.

8. When giving oral presentations at meetings, the perception of delivering a good or great paper is often enhanced by a poor presentation or paper by the previous speaker.

POSTSCRIPT #1. When Carl Dunbar was offered a faculty appointment at Minnesota in 1917, he went home to discuss it with his father, as he told us during the spring, 1958 field trip. The Dunbar family owned the largest farm in Douglas County, KS. After listening, his father thought a while and said, “Carl, that’s fine. Just make sure they pay you at least $300.00 a month.”

POSTSCRIPT #2. Richard F. Flint was considered by many to be extremely vain and many stories circulated around the department. My favorite was about his return to Yale after World War II ended. He served as a Captain in the U. S. Army supervising a weather station in Greenland. On returning, he wore his uniform, including to his Science 2 class. One day he stepped into the Science 2 classroom and noticed the students all wore their military uniforms. He discovered that ten students in the front row out-ranked him through battlefield commissions. He never wore the uniform again.