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The Association Upcoming Meetings:
10th
CAVEPS and Quaternary Extinction Symposium CANQUA June 5-8, 2005 2nd
International Congress
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David Hopkins: 1997 AMQUA Distinguished Career Award It is difficult to think of a scientist who has contributed more to our understanding of the Quaternary than David M. Hopkins. As the recognized authority on the Bering Land Bridge (or Beringia, as it is becoming known) in all its many facets, Dave has been the leading advocate for interdisciplinary studies in the Quaternary, long before it was fashionable to advocate such an approach in most other scientific circles or even within other areas of Quaternary studies. He has repeatedly demonstrated the interrelatedness of these areas of inquiry in his own research, with publications in hard-rock, surficial and marine geology, as well as in geobotany, climatology, archeology and oceanography. Dave's work in Alaska and adjacent territories now spans half a century, with active field seasons as far separated from his beloved Alaska as Lake Baikal to the west and Tjornes, Iceland, to the east. Wherever work might be done that would help to shed light on the environments of Beringia, and the floral, faunal and human interchanges in this region through the prehistoric past, he has been eager to go. He has also been a leader in stimulating young scientists to pursue studies in the region, with an infectious enthusiasm and warmly supportive strength that has never done other than to encourage others to seek more deeply for new insights with all the intensity they could muster. At the 1994 annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Seattle, he also received special tribute for the tremendous impact he has had in particular on the professional development of numerous women scientists now active and making their own major contributions in Beringian studies: Julie Brigham-Grette, Ellie Brouwers, Pat Anderson, Pat Heiser, Mary Edwards, Sonya Benson and Vicky Goetcheus, just to name a few. His service to the profession has been attested to by serving as President of both AMQUA and INQUA in 1975-76, and as a member of numerous scientific committees and advisory boards, from the U. S. National Commission to the International Permafrost Association to the advisory boards for the Center for the Study of Early Man in the Americas and the International Biological Programme Tundra Biome project. Arguably, he was, probably more than any other geoscientist, responsible for the continued slow thawing of relations between the U. S. and U. S. S. R. during the Cold War years, a time when he refused to recognize the validity of petty political differences which had no direct bearing whatever on the scientific problems under study. It was certainly a major crowning achievement and testimony to his perseverance, and to the honor and esteem with which he is also held on the Siberian side of the Bering Strait as a result of his long and steadfast support of Russian scientists, that he finally was able to achieve a life-long goal of undertaking field work on the western shores of Bering Sea with the collapse of the old Soviet system. Nearly three decades ago, in 1968, Dave received the Kirk Bryan Award from the Geological Society of America (GSA) for outstanding contributions to our understanding of the Quaternary, for his book "The Bering Land Bridge," now increasingly referred to as "The Old Testament" of Beringian studies. The "New Testament," formally entitled "Paleoecology of Beringia," he co-edited in 1982 with John Matthews, Charlie Schweger and Steve Young, a volume which still stands as an oft-cited and the most recent major synthesis on the region, and which includes papers from such disparate fields as climate modeling and modern elephant biology, but all with a Hopkinsian Beringian focus. In 1983, Dave was awarded a prestigious G. K. Gilbert Fellowship from the U. S. Geological Survey, a recognition he subsequently declined as he resigned from the USGS to take up residence at the University of Alaska as Distinguished Professor of Quaternary Studies and Director of the Alaska Quaternary Center. He subsequently also received the Roald Fryxell Award from the Society for American Archeology in 1988, as well as the Archeological Geology Award from GSA in 1990. These were followed by the Franklin Burr Award of the National Geographic Society in 1993, and the Distinguished Career Award from the Quaternary Geology and Geomorphology Division of GSA in 1995. For all these reasons, and many others much harder to put
into words but readily understood by everyone Dave has touched over the years, it is only
fitting, and indeed an honor, to nominate David M. Hopkins as recipient of the
Distinguished Career Award from the American Quaternary Association. Bob Nelson Thank you, Bob Nelson, and thank you, AMQUA. I will remember today as one of the high points of my life. I will also remember this day for the prolonged, near-terminal case of writer's block that it occasioned, much to the consternation of President Vance Holliday, AMQUA newsletter editor Darrell Kaufman, and, of course, David M. Hopkins. I've had two earlier occasions to write acceptance speeches, and on both occasions I drew upon youthful memories. The implication must be that my first 20 years shaped the rest of my life. To summarize, I lived out my childhood and most of my adolescence in a small village in the low but rugged mountains of southern New Hampshire. In the township of Greenfield, more than 70% of the land was cleared of old-growth forest shortly after Civil War times. As an avid railfan, I have looked at many old daguerreotypes and photographs showing rural and small town scenes in northern New England during the late 1800s, and I have always been struck by the raw and unfinished look of things. There are factories and farms, but almost no trees. If you have before you an 1880 and a 1940 version of the same view, the difference will be striking: the 1940 photo will show large and graceful elm trees arching over sidewalks or old maple and oak trees shading village streets, and all this foliage somehow softens the landscape. In the 1880 photo, not only are the trees lacking, there are not even any scrubby witch-hazel and chokecherry bushes along the stone walls. The landscape seems raw because all the trees and even the shrubs have evidently been recently cut down, and they have yet to grow back. When the forests were removed across much of northern New England, boulder-strewn dead-ice landscapes were revealed-- dense scatters of erratics strewn over hummocky surfaces that look as though left by glacial ice that had melted away only a few weeks earlier. As these stoney soils were cleared, the boulders had to be gathered up and piled along field boundaries to form networks of stone walls that defined and partitioned hayfields, cornfields, pastures, and former stage roads. Sixty or seventy years later, land partitioned by these stone walls had once more become woods and forests, and by the 1930's only 15% of Greenfield's land remained cleared. The dynamism of this changing landscape, made known to me from the results of my mother's efforts to collect oral history from elderly farmers and farmers' wives, amazed me! A similar landscape and similar transformations in the hill country of western New Hampshire are well described by Donald Hall in "String Too Short to be Saved." This was the setting in which, as a school child, I became an enthusiastic amateur naturalist. A few years later, this led to my transformation into a Geologist and a decade after that, my gradual transformation into a paleonaturalist, that is to say into an interdisciplinary natural scientist. As a youth, the hills, the lakes, and the all-enveloping forests drew me close to nature. . .but the village shaped my way of thinking. My upbringing in a small yankee village socialized me to be skeptical of all received knowledge. New Hampshire, not Missouri, deserved the nickname "Show-Me State". Four months before my 17th birthday, I left home to attend the University of New Hampshire, where eventually I found my way into a Geology major, graduating with a B.S. in Spring, 1942. Lucky for me, at just that time the U.S. Geological Survey was recruiting a suddenly needed batch of Junior Geologists from a register of young men who had taken and passed the annual Civil Service exam. It happened that the Geology Department at UNH customarily encouraged their majors to take the Civil Service exam "just for practice" during their Junior year. Seniors were encouraged to take the exam "for real", in the hopes of getting a job. In MY senior year, I lucked out, and my grade was 93 out of a possible 100 (that's what I remember, but can that really be true??). It wasn't very long before I received a telegram asking "Will you accept employment in Alaska with the Geological Survey?" "YESSS!" I wired back, and that's how I became the Geological Survey's youngest and least well-trained geologist at the age of 20! That had a lot to do with my 53-year career as an Alaskan geologist (or rather, Paleonaturalist). I stayed with the Geological Survey for 43 years, and the reason that I stayed was that unlike the present Geological Survey, it was a wonderful way to work. By the time I had reached my mid-20s, I found that I had completed an informal 4-year apprenticeship and I now could lead my own field party and I could pretty much choose my own work. Different from nowadays! Working as a geologist in Alaska was a challenge in those days. Phillip S. Smith's Geologic Map of Alaska, dating from around 1888, was moth-eaten by large and small white patches that denoted areas where nothing was known. There was no Quaternary Geology map at all, nor was there a reliable glacial geology map. When mapping, everyone did everything, so the pressure was to be a generalist, not a specialist. Several of the older geologists wrote large parts of their USGS Bulletins in their field notebooks, as I learned when I consulted the field notebooks hoping to find some elaboration on interesting observations mentioned in the printed texts. Knowledge of the age and sequence of the widespread and well-exposed plant-fossil bearing strata was in chaos. Although several Professional Papers had reported on the floras in detail, the conclusion was that practically all of these rocks were of Eocene age. In later years, Jack Wolfe and I set out to check this unbelievable diagnosis, and Jack soon established that some of the "Eocene" floras were Late Cretaceous in age, but most were of Paleocene, Oligocene, Miocene, and Pliocene age. Only a few of these fossil plant assemblages were in Eocene sediments! The body of literature on Alaskan geology was so small that it was easily possible for a person such as myself to become familiar with everything that had been written. In other words, not very much was known, and that meant that there was not much knowledge to build on. It also meant that there was commonly a lack of context for new mapping and for detailed stratigraphic and geomorphic studies. This meant that no one was much interested in Alaska, and consequently it was very, very difficult to get anything about Alaska Geology published. These handicaps could only be dealt with by publishing a series of review papers that hopefully would illuminate previously hidden Alaska-wide relationships and point out some of the topics and areas that most urgently demanded attention. In the old Soviet Union, I know a number of scientists who are recognized and valued as "synthesizers". The most active synthesizers writing on Quaternary topics have been Troy Pewe, Thor Karlstrom, Peter Lea, Tom Ager, the team of Pat Anderson and Linda Brubaker, and myself. The Geological Survey used to have a famous (or perhaps infamous) editing section which cleaned up everybody's grammar and other large and small bloopers. This reports section has been wonderful at improving my writing, but my unconscious slavery to the USGS style manual, "Suggestions to Authors" may well be responsible for the 12-month case of Writer's Block that so delayed this response to AMQUA's Career Award. How much simpler it would have been if Vance Holliday had given me a two-week deadline last October! Worst of all, my students now refer to my editing efforts as "Hopkinsizing" their efforts to communicate in good English! Now, even though I started late (by many months) it's now
well past time to bring this to a close. Probably my synthesizing days are over. Even so,
I count myself very fortunate to have lived such a happy and exciting life. Thank you all
very much for the acknowledgement implicit in AMQUA's career award. David M. Hopkins |