John W. Wells
John West Wells (born July 15, 1907 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , † January 12, 1994 in Ithaca , New York ) was an American paleontologist .
Life
Wells grew up in Homer, New York, where he was interested in the local Paleozoic fossils. He graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a bachelor's degree in 1928, taught as an instructor at the University of Texas from 1929 to 1931, and received his doctorate from Cornell University in 1933 , having received his master’s degree there in 1930 . As a post-doctoral student in 1933/34 he was at the leading natural history museums in Europe (London, Berlin, Paris). From 1935 to 1937 he was with the specialist in coral taxonomy T. Wayland Vaughan in Washington DC 1937/38 he taught at the State Normal School in Fredonia . From 1938 he was professor of geology at Ohio State University , interrupted his service as an analyst of war destruction at the Office of Strategic Services , and from 1948 until his retirement in 1973 he was a professor at Cornell University. From 1962 to 1965 he headed the geology faculty.
He was an internationally recognized expert on fossil and recent corals (especially their taxonomy). He wrote monographs on fossil corals in Texas, corals of the Gulf Coast and Caribbean and of South America and (after excursions in 1947 to the Bikini Atoll and 1950 to the Arno Atoll) on corals of the Marshall Islands. The work at Bikini Atoll was related to the nuclear weapons tests planned there and was coordinated by the US Geological Survey (including William Storrs Cole , Harry Stephen Ladd ).
In 1954 he was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Queensland in Brisbane with Dorothy Hill , a leading expert on paleozoic corals. Together they wrote the coral section in Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology (1956). During his stay in Australia, he also collected corals from the Barrier Reef for the National Museum in Washington DC.
In 1963 he published his discovery in Nature that the number of days in a year could be deduced from corals of the Devonian Mountains, which at that time 350 million years ago was 400 days a year. Wells concluded that the earth's rotation had slowed since then.
He also dealt with the early geological history of the USA and, with George White, was the initiator of the founding of the History of the Earth Sciences Society.
In 1962 he was President of the Paleontological Society and in 1974 received the Paleontological Society Medal . He had been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1968 . In 1987 he received the James Hall Medal from the New York State Geological Survey. 1961/62 he was President of the Paleontological Research Institute.
In 1932 he married Elizabeth Baker (died 1990), with whom he had a daughter. She was the daughter of the painter WC Baker.
Web links
- Obituary in The Independent, February 25, 1994
- William Brice, Biographical Memoirs National Academy Science, pdf
- Brice, Philbrick, Bloom: John West Wells, pdf
References and comments
- ↑ Coral growth and geochronometry, Nature, Volume 197, 1963, pp. 948-950
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wells, John W. |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Wells, John West (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American paleontologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 15, 1907 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Philadelphia , Pennsylvania |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 12, 1994 |
| Place of death | Ithaca , New York |