E-an Zen

E-an Zen (born May 31, 1928 in Beijing , † March 29, 2014 in Reston , Virginia ) was a Chinese -American geologist.

Life

Zen was the son of a chemist and his mother was active in educational reforms. The family was dispersed by the Japanese occupation from which they fled to other parts of China and only reunited in Chungking in 1942. He came to the United States with his family in 1946, went to school in Cambridge (Massachusetts) (previously he had been taught mainly by private tutors and parents) and studied from 1947 at Cornell University with a bachelor's degree in 1951 and at Harvard University with a master's degree in 1952 and a doctorate in geology with James Burleigh Thompson (Jim Thompson) 1955. Even the dissertation was devoted to an aspect of the geology of the Appalachians. He then worked at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution until 1958, where he examined sediments from the deep-sea trenches off Chile and Peru with the aim of finding evidence of active diagenesis processes. He was able to refute the view at the time that clay minerals behave sluggishly under low pressure and temperature. 1958/59 Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina and 1959 until retirement in 1989 at the US Geological Survey . He was recruited from Preston Cloud thanks to his research in sedimentology , although there was resistance because he was not a US citizen at the time. From 1990 he was Adjunct Professor at the University of Maryland , which he remained until 2007.

In 1962 he was Visiting Associate Professor at Caltech , in 1973 Crosby Visiting Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , in 1981 Harry Hess Senior Visiting Fellow at Princeton University and in 1991 Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University .

He is known for fundamental investigations into the complicated history, stratigraphy and tectonics of the (northern) Appalachians with the participation of various terranes . His dissertation already clarified the stratigraphic and tectonic problem of the Taconic cliff in Vermont.

He also dealt with phase equilibrium of metamorphic and sedimentary rocks (including general considerations on the topology of phase diagrams), petrology of igneous rocks in Montana (formation of granite, phase diagrams that he had previously examined in metamorphic rocks). In retirement he turned to the geomorphology of rivers in rock bedrock such as the formation of potholes, where he developed new ideas and tested them at the Great Falls, Montana .

In 1983 a geological map of Massachusetts was published under his direction . He had been entrusted with the management of the extensive, but deprived USGS project in 1975/76 and it was completed under his direction in two years.

In 1986 he received the Arthur L. Day Medal , 1991 the Roebling Medal , 1979 the Distinguished Service Medal of the US Department of the Interior and 1992 the John Coke Medal of the Geological Society of London . In 1996 he received the Thomas Jefferson Medal from the Virginia Museum of Natural History. In 1975/76 he was President of the Mineralogical Society of America and 1973 of the Geological Society of Washington. In 1992 he was President of the Geological Society of America . He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , the National Academy of Sciences (1976) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science .

In 1963 he became a US citizen.

Fonts

• Time and Space Relationship of the Taconic Allochthon and Autochthon, GSA special paper 97, 1967
• The Taconide Zone and the Taconic Orogeny in the Western Part of the Northern Appalachian Orogeny, Geological Society of America, Special Paper 135, 1972
• Exotic terranes in the New England Appalachians — limits, candidates, and ages: A speculative essay, in: RD Hatcher, H. Williams, L. Zietz (Eds.), Contributions to the tectonics and geophysics of mountain chains, Geological Society of America Memoir 158, 1983, pp. 55-81
• Tectonostratigraphic Terranes in the Northern Appalachians, American Geophysical Union, Field Trip Guidebook 359, 1989

Web links

• Daniel Doctor, Susan Kieffer, Memorial to E-an Zen (1928-2014), Geological Society of America, pdf
• Website at the University of Vermont

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Life and career data according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004