Helen Tappan Loeblich

Helen Nina Tappan Loeblich , she also published under Helen Tappan , (born October 12, 1917 in Norman , Oklahoma , † August 18, 2004 ) was an American micropalaeontologist and foraminifera researcher. Alongside her husband Alfred R. Loeblich and Joseph Cushman , she is considered the most important foraminifera researcher of the 20th century. Her botanical author's abbreviation (she also described single-cell organisms counted among the algae ) is " Tappan ".

Helen Loeblich (nee Tappan) studied geology, in 1937 she earned her Bachelor of Science from the University of Oklahoma , followed in 1939 by her Master of Science . During her studies she met Alfred Loeblich, whom she married on June 18, 1939. Both went to the University of Chicago , where she earned her doctorate in 1942 with a thesis on foraminifera of the Middle Cretaceous in Oklahoma and Texas.

In 1942, she was the first female faculty member to teach at Tulane College of Arts and Sciences , filling in for her husband, who was drafted. After World War II, she resumed her previous work on the United States Geological Survey (USGS) after moving with Al Loeblich to Washington, DC , where Al Loeblich was a curator at the Smithsonian Institution's Natural Museum of Natural History . In 1953/54 she and her husband toured Europe for a year in preparation for the foraminifera volumes of the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology , collected over two tons of material and viewed numerous collections in European museums, Tappan photographed the specimens studied. Since the USGS did not fund any research overseas, Helen Loeblich was a Guggenheim fellow during this time. Between 1954 and 1956 Helen Loeblich did research for the Smithsonian Institution.

In 1957 she moved with her husband to California, where Al Loeblich became a micropalaeontologist with the Chevron oil company. From 1958 she taught at UCLA , since 1966 as a full faculty member, since 1968 as a full professor, and from 1973 to 1975 she was Vice Chairman of the Faculty of Geology there.

The Loeblichs worked closely together on the collection and classification of foraminifera. Helen Loeblich's students were also those of Alfred Loeblich's, although Alfred Loeblich had no formal professorship. Both complemented each other, whereby Alfred Loeblich was more extroverted and aggressive in scientific disputes, while Helen Loeblich was more reserved and had a balancing effect.

Helen Loeblich published a total of 272 scientific papers, essays and books - mostly with her husband, but sometimes also alone. The most important of these are the two-volume work on foraminifera published jointly in 1964 as part of the 58-volume Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology , which is still a standard work in micropaleontology, and the Foraminiferal genera and classification published in 1988 . Independently of her husband, Tappan published The Paleobiology of Plant Protists in 1980 . In addition to foraminifera, she also dealt with other microfossils. She was a good draftsman and illustrated her essays herself.

In 1984 she received the Raymond C. Moore Medal for Paleontology (three years before her husband) and in 1982 both received the Paleontological Society Medal . In 1978 she became an honorary member of the Society for Sedimentary Geology (SEPM) and President of the Paleontological Society .

She had four children from her marriage to Al Loeblich.

Fonts

• with Alfred Loeblich: Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology, Part C. Protista 2. Sarcodina, chiefly 'Thecamoebians' and Foraminiferida, 2 volumes 1964
• The Paleobiology of Plant Protists, Freeman 1981
• with Alfred Loeblich: Foraminiferal genera and classification, 2 volumes, Van Nostrand 1988

proof

• Reed Wicander: A Tribute to Helen Tappan Loeblich, 1917 - 2004 , obituary on the website of the Department of Earth and Space Sciences at UCLA, online
• Jere H. Lipps: Helen Tappan and Alfred R. Loeblich, Jr. Micropaleontologists , Anuário do Instituto de Geociências, Vol. 29 - 1/2006

Individual evidence

1. ↑ SEPM award winners ( Memento of the original from March 23, 2013 on WebCite ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.