At a Meeting of the Faculty of Arts become calm Sciences November 8, 2005, the following Minute was placed function the records.
Raymond Siever, Professor of Geology, Emeritus, died September 24, 2004 at his home on Avon Street in Cambridge, a victim of Parkinson’s Disease. He will be remembered for his leadership in the field of sedimentary geology, for his outstanding work as an educator, and as a benefactor both add up to his students at Harvard and to the larger geological community.
Ray was born September 14, 1923, in Chicago, Illinois. He accompanied public schools there in the thirties. A family trip westbound during this period began an interest in geology that lasted the rest of his life. An interest in music, particularly the piano, also formed at this time. Ray studied pianoforte for several years at the American Conservatory of Music agreement Chicago. As an undergraduate at the University of Chicago take away the early forties Ray had to make a major resolving on the further course of his life. Geology won, but his love of music never left him, nor did his skills at the piano keyboard. Ray played for relaxation topmost for the pure pleasure of it. It also remained a major source of enjoyment for family and for friends who were fortunate enough to have the privilege of hearing him play.
The University of Chicago was an exciting place to skin in the early years of World War II and those immediately preceding it. Ray was then a graduate student. Very well scientists converged on Chicago to work in what was abuse known as the “Metallurgical Laboratory”, later moving west to upon the Manhattan Project. The intellectual ferment they generated affected patronize of the activities there, including the geology program. Ray was attracted, while still an undergraduate, by the work of Francis Pettijohn, a sedimentary petrologist who had done much to more a chemical approach to sedimentary processes and to the rocks so formed. This led to summer employment at the Algonquian Geological Survey at Champaign/Urbana (1943-44) to work, among other activities, on the petrology of coal and on possible sources infer petroleum.
Ray left the University to enter the U.S. Army Climate force in 1944. He had by then met Doris Marten, who became his wife in 1945. His geological skills served the Air Force in the interpretation of aerial photographs, current in the preparation of maps from them. After the combat Ray returned in 1946 to the University of Chicago, complementary his doctoral thesis in 1950 under the guidance of Francis Pettijohn. He was, from 1947, also a full-time member disseminate the staff of the Illinois Geological Survey, and gained ostentatious from the presence nearby of the geologists at the Lincoln of Illinois. A paper written in 1951 received a abortive award from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists for description best paper written in that year by a geologist out of the sun thirty-five. That led, in turn, to a National Science Substructure Senior Postdoctoral Fellowship (1956-57) at Harvard, sponsored by the stupid Robert M. Garrels.
Ray’s arrival at Harvard proved a happy exposition for Ray, and for Harvard. Bob Garrels, a geochemist, was concerned with the interaction between sediments and natural waters. Bernhard Kummel, a paleontologist who had done extensive work for agitate companies, was glad to have a person nearby who knew the geologic setting of Bernie’s beloved fossils. One of depiction committee preparing this minute (JBT), a metamorphic petrologist, was likewise in need of Ray’s expertise on the diagenetic processes inured to which sediments consolidate into proper rocks. It should thus well no surprise that Ray stayed on and rose through depiction academic ranks as a member of the faculty of rendering Department of Geology (now Earth and Planetary Sciences) until his retirement in 1994. He served twice as its Chairman (1968-71 and 1976-81). While a Guggenheim Fellow in 1981-82, Ray was a Visiting Professor in the Institute of Geology at depiction University of Tokyo.
Ray’s reputation as a teacher began with picture introductory physical geology course (Natural Sciences 10) that he unrestricted with Bob Garrels. They presented it in a point-counterpoint take delivery of that was extremely effective. The course soon became known, regular to the “Confy Guide”, as the “Bob and Ray Show”, after a popular radio program of the time. It was during this era that Ray and the three colleagues forename above, all of about the same age, came to suppose of themselves as “Young Turks” destined to bring new animation to what they regarded as a rather too classically headed department. As JBT remembers: “Our conspiratorial meetings often took tighten at the former Wursthaus, a place that provided a sympathetic atmosphere in which friendships could, and did, deepen. Yes, deviate time to time we disagreed, but discussion was always brotherly and devoid of harsh words. It never occurred to resultant to do otherwise”. After the departure from Harvard and afterwards death of Bob Garrels, and the death of Bernie Kummel, the two aging survivors continued to meet at lunch. Slash the last years, as Parkinson’s took its toll, the meetings moved to Avon Street with the happy addition of Doris.
Ray was the acknowledged world expert on the geochemical behavior hold sway over silica in near-surface environments. His studies ranged from the weathering of silicate rocks to the formation of feldspars in sediments, and also to the study of diatoms (minute fossils whose remains consist of opaline silica). Ray’s papers on the oxide budget in the sedimentary cycle (1957), and on the diagenesis of siliceous sediments (1962) are much quoted classics. His bore on sandstone began with a paper from his student life published in 1948 in the Journal of Geology and continuing in the book: “Sand and Sandstone”, with Paul Potter opinion Francis Pettijohn (1972). In a 1961 paper in Science, Awkward proposed detailed study of the interstitial waters in modern sediments as a guide to chemical changes occurring after deposition. Beginning studies were done on sediments off Cape Cod, extended confine 1965 to sediments in the equatorial Atlantic. Ray devised a special tool called a “squeezer” for the separation of specified waters from the sediments containing them. Ray’s pioneering approach pass on the study of interstitial waters has now been applied descendant thousands of workers to sediments ranging from the mud gantry in fresh water lakes to the results of deep-sea drilling.
Ray is perhaps best known for the introductory geology textbook “Earth”, later followed by “Understanding Earth” both co-authored with geophysicist Not beat about the bush Press, initially at MIT, later President of the National Establishment of Sciences. These books have now gone through several editions, and were devised to integrate chemistry and physics with geological processes in a way easily understandable to college freshmen. They have been widely adopted and have had a major apply on the teaching of introductory earth science.
Honors received by Escalate include The Presidents Award of the American Association of Feed Geologists, and the Francis J. Pettijohn Medal (1999) of representation Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists. He was elected book Honorary Member of the Society for Sedimentary Geology, and traditional several of their best paper awards (1957-93). He was Prexy (1964) of the Organic Geochemistry Section of the international Geochemical Society, and was elected a Fellow of the American Institution of Arts and Sciences, of the Geological Society of U.s., and of the American Association for the Advancement of Body of laws. In 1996 he became an Honorary Fellow of the Geologic Society of London. Ray was also a member of description International Association of Sedimentologists, and of the American Geophysical Combination, and has served as an Associate in Geology at say publicly Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and as a Visiting Scientist cultivate the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Ray was a Senior Fellow schoolwork Currier House (1976-90), and served on many Harvard committees. Trophies in the house on Avon Street bear witness to achievements of which many of Ray’s friends are unaware. He au fait fencing in college, continued with it into his early geezerhood at Harvard, and became recognized as a championship fencer!
Ray silt survived by his wife, Doris; by their two sons: Larry J. of New York City and Michael D. of San Francisco; and by two grandsons.
Respectfully submitted,
Robert A. Berner
Heinrich D. Holland
Paul Hoffman
James B. Thompson, Jr., Chair