Peter Vail

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Peter R. Vail (born January 13, 1930 in New York City ) is an American geologist and geophysicist , known as a pioneer in sequence stratigraphy and seismic stratigraphy as a result of his work in petroleum geology and marine geology.

Comparison of Sea Level Curves by Exxon and Anthony Hallam (1983)

Vail graduated from Dartmouth College with a bachelor's degree in 1952 and Northwestern University , where he received his master's degree in 1956 and his PhD that same year. He then went to Exxon as a geophysicist and petroleum geologist , where he became a Senior Research Scientist and stayed until 1986. In 1976 he was visiting scholar at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute . From 1986 he was W. Maurice Ewing Professor of Oceanography at Rice University .

Vail revolutionized the geological interpretation of reflection seismology data and showed that it could correlate with sea level fluctuations and be used as a method in stratigraphic mapping. In 1977 he and other Exxon geologists published a diagram of global sea level fluctuations in the history of the earth (Vail Curve), which they had obtained from marine geological research in petroleum geology. It was based on proprietary stratigraphic and seismic information from the oil company and was therefore initially not independently verifiable by scientists.

In 2005 he received the Benjamin Franklin Medal from the Franklin Institute and in 1986 the William Smith Medal from the London Geological Society. In 2003 he received the Penrose Medal from the Geological Society of America and he received the Sidney Powers Memorial Award from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (and its President's Award ) and the Virgil Kauffman Gold Medal from the Society of Exploration Geophysicists . In 1992 he received the Twenhofel Medal .

Fonts

  • Bilal Haq, Jan Hardenbol, Peter Vail Chronology of Fluctuating Sea Levels Since the Triassic , Science, Volume 235, 1987, pp. 1156-1167
  • RM Mitchum, S. Thompson, Peter Vail Seismic stratigraphy and global changes of sea level, part 3: Relative changes of sea level from coastal onlap , in CE Clayton (Editor) Seismic stratigraphy - applications to hydrocarbon exploration , Tulsa, Oklahoma, American Association of Petroleum Geologists Memoir 26, 1977, pp. 63-81.
  • J. Hardenbol, RG Todd, Peter Vail Jurassic unconformities, chronostratigraphy, and sea-level changes from seismic stratigraphy and biostratigraphy , in JS Schlee (editor) Interregional unconformities and hydrocarbon accumulation , Tulsa, Oklahoma, American Association of Petroleum Geologists Memoir 36, 1984 , Pp. 129-144.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life and career data according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
personal data
SURNAME Vail, Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Vail, Peter R.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American geologist
DATE OF BIRTH January 13, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City