Harold Ernest Vokes

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Harold Ernest Vokes (born June 27, 1908 in Windsor , Ontario , † September 16, 1998 in Hammond , Louisiana ) was an American malacologist and paleontologist . He later specialized in mussels (bivalvia) and taught at Tulane University .

Life

Vokes was born in Canada but moved with the family to Pasadena when he was twelve , where he attended Occidental College , and studied at the University of California, Berkeley , where he received his PhD in 1935. As a post-graduate student he was at Carl Dunbar at the Peabody Museum of Natural History of Yale University . In 1937 he became Assistant Curator and in 1941 Associate Curator at the American Museum of Natural History . During World War II , he went to the United States Geological Survey in 1943 and looked for uranium in the Green River Desert . Even after the war he worked for the USGS in the summer months (Status des WAE, when actually employed ) until 1956 , for which he mapped in the coastal mountains of Oregon and looked for oil under the Columbia Plateau basalts . He was from 1945 at Johns Hopkins University , where he was professor of geology in 1947. In 1956 he came to Tulane University as a professor of geology, where he built up paleontology. From 1957 to 1966 he headed the Faculty of Geology. In 1972 he became WR Irby Professor of Geology and in 1978 he was retired.

In 1959 he married the malacologist and paleontologist Emily H. Vokes , who was also a professor at Tulane University and with whom he worked. She specialized in snails. Together they explored the mollusc fauna on the Atlantic coast of North and South America and fossil sites in Florida, Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama and the Dominican Republic. The marriage had four children.

In 1971 he was visiting professor at the University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. In 1952/53 he was looking for coal in the Philippines for the Philippine Bureau of Mines.

Among other things, he researched freshwater mussels in India and marine fossils from the Eocene in California and was a Guggenheim Fellow in Lebanon, where he studied the geology and palaeontology of mountain regions and especially the mollusks from the Cretaceous.

He founded Tulane Studies in Geology and Paleontology . From 1974 to 1976 he was President of the Paleontological Research Institute.

In 1951 he was President of the Paleontological Society and from 1940 to 1949 its secretary and 1952 Vice President of the Geological Society of America .

Fonts

  • Genera of the Bivalvia: A Systematic and Bibliographic Catalog, Paleontological Research Institute, 2nd edition 1980 (first 1967, Addendum 1990)

literature

  • EH Vokes: Obituary in American Conchologist, Volume 26, December 1998

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Vokes, Harold Ernest
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American malacologist and paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH June 27, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Windsor , Ontario
DATE OF DEATH September 16, 1998
Place of death Hammond , Louisiana