Raymond Siever
1923 - 2004
"minute" in a meeting of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
"Ray was born September 14, 1923 in Chicago, Illinois. He attended public schools there in the thirties. A family trip west during this period began an interest in geology that lasted the rest of his life. An interest in music, especially the piano, also formed at this time. Ray studied piano for several years at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago. As an undergraduate at the University of Chicago in the early forties Ray had to make a major decision on the further course of his life. Geology won, but his
love of music never left him, nor did his skills at the piano keyboard....
"The University of Chicago was an exciting place to be in the early years of World War II and those immediately preceding it. Ray was then a graduate student. Renowned scientists converged on Chicago to work in what was then known as the ”Metallurgical Laboratory”, later moving west to begin the Manhattan Project. The intellectual ferment they generated affected many of the activities there, including the geology program. Ray was attracted, while still an undergraduate, by the work of Francis Pettijohn, a sedimentary petrologist who had done much to further a chemical approach to sedimentary processes and to the rocks so formed. This led to summer employment at the Illinois Geological Survey at Champaign/Urbana (1943-44) to work, among other activities, on the petrology of coal and on possible sources of petroleum.
"Ray left the University to enter the U.S. Army Air force in 1944. He had by then met Doris Fisher, who became his wife in 1945. His geological skills served the Air Force in the interpretation of aerial photographs, and in the preparation of maps from them. After the war Ray returned in 1946 to the University of Chicago, completing his doctoral thesis in 1950 under the guidance of Francis Pettijohn. He was, from 1947, also a full-time member of the staff of the Illinois Geological Survey, and gained much from the presence nearby of the geologists at the University of Illinois. A paper written in 1951 received a special award from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists for the best paper written in that year by a geologist under thirty-five. That led, in turn, to a National Science Foundation Senior Postdoctoral Fellowship (1956-57) at Harvard, sponsored by the late Robert M. Garrels.
"Ray’s arrival at Harvard proved a happy event for Ray, and for Harvard. Bob Garrels, a geochemist, was concerned with the interaction between sediments and natural waters. Bernhard Kummel, a paleontologist who had done extensive work for oil companies, was glad to have a person nearby who knew the geologic setting of Bernie’s beloved fossils....
"Ray stayed on and rose through the academic ranks as a member of the faculty of the Department of Geology (now Earth and
Planetary Sciences) until his retirement in 1994. He served twice as its Chairman (1968-71 and 1976-81)....
"Ray is perhaps best known for the introductory geology textbook “Earth”, later followed by “Understanding Earth” both co-authored with geophysicist Frank Press...."
Terms
"Raymond Siever." Memorial "minute" entered at the meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University, November 8, 2005. http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic854852.files/Siever_MM.pdf
For more information on Siever, see "Raymond Siever," Harvard University Gazette, February 23, 2006, http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/02.23/18-mm.html (accessed 07/07/2015)
