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John Andrews

1998 AMQUA Distinguished Career Award Winner

Two things that distinguish John from many others are his humanity, especially in his relationships with colleagues and support of students, and his remarkably open mind in science. The later kept him from getting caught up in dogma and allowed him to quickly recognize how advances in areas seemingly outside the realm of conventional Quaternary studies might be applicable to the Quaternary. John has made a profound and lasting impact on the discipline through the successful careers of the many graduate students that he has trained and placed back in academe and federal labs. The long list of graduate students fortunate enough to have worked under John include:

PhD Students, 1969-present
Dave Pheasant, John England, Giff Miller, Art Dyke, Barry Fahey, Colin Thorne, Dana Isherwood, Bill Mode, Dick Cowan, Eric Leonard, Alan Nelson, Peter Clark, Bill Locke, Tom Davis, Lisa Osterman, Jim Johnson, Peter Lea, Chris Waythomas, Harvey Thorleifson, Jay Stravers, Chip Laymon, Kirstin Williams, Aslaug Geirsdottir, Anne Jennings, Val Sloan, Mary Gillham, and Raol Miller

Present PhD students
Jorunn Hardardottir, Donny Barber, Kathy Licht, Lisa Doner, Miki Smith

MSc students, 1969-present
Molly Mahaffy , Darv Lloyd, Barb McCoy, John England, Art Dyke, Fred Hawkins, Paul Carrara, Steve Boyer, Larry Williams, Larry Anderson, Anne Jennings, Kirstin Williams, Julie Brigham-Grette, Jim Walters, Dave Muller, Laureen Stravers, Bob Retherford, Lesley Evans, Kathy Licht, Wendy Cunningham, Tom Cooper, Miki Smith, Andrew Stein, Bill Locke, Stephanie Baker, Mandy Wilson, Charleen Locke, Julian Dowdeswell, Evelyn Lind, Kathy Tedesco, Matt Kirby, Phil Wyatt, Mark Abbott, Patti Best, Marilyn Grout, Art Mears, Steve Haefner, and Mike Kerwin

Current MSc students
Wendy Freeman and Stephanie Carter Schoolfield

John's scientific contributions
occur in three principal areas: (1) studies of the behavior of the Laurentide Ice Sheet (LIS), (2) papers on relative sea level history (methods, theory, and modeling), and (3) research on ice sheet ocean interactions (including Heinrich events). No one has exceeded John's contribution to the first two areas. John's contributions to LIS studies include extensive field work in Arctic Canada, several syntheses of continental ice sheet activity, consideration of ice-sheet inception mechanisms, and modeling of ice sheet dynamics (with Molly Mahaffy). His recent work in the marine environment stems from these early interests. His work on relative sea-level history includes field surveys and improved methods of dating raised marine deposits. His synthesis of methods and approaches to the interpretation of raised marine depositional systems (Institute of British Geographers Special Publication No. 2, 1970) won the prestigious Kirk Bryan Award. John appears to have forgotten that we are expected to "plateau" somewhere in mid career and has continued to contribute to the fields of geomorphology, stratigraphy, geochronology, glaciology, geodynamics, paleoclimatology, and marine geology. He has become the consummate Quaternary Scientist, having published nearly 300 papers and also having done more than his share for the professional and academic community along the way. He was an important force in setting the directions of the Geographical Branch and Geological Survey of Canada. He has been a driving force behind the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at Boulder, Colorado and recently served as Chair of the Department at the University of Colorado. He is a past president of the Quaternary and Geomorphology Division of GSA and a past president of AMQUA. John has always brought a thoroughly human touch into his science and especially in his relationships with his students and colleagues. The excitement of science has come naturally to him, and he has shown that this too can be taught and shared. Like all great careers, his has been inspired by an infectious and insuppressible curiosity. John effortlessly communicates to those around him that there are absolutely intriguing questions that not only remain to be answered, but to be discovered as well! This propensity to question, which arises again and again in John, is amongst his most conspicuous academic and personal qualities. These questions have welled-up from an impressively high vantage point which has always characterized his career, sustaining his creativity and productivity. John's questions draw you in, command your attention, and just when they might seem unresolvable, John always has room for some well timed and self-effacing humor, reminding you that it is also acceptable not to know. His former students and friends are all very grateful for the curiosity, warmth and humor that he has brought to his science. These human qualities remain indispensable, and they are inseparable from his diverse accomplishments. John's other great contribution has been his students, which are not only large in number they also loom large in the eye of the scientific community. John's style of interacting with his graduate students is exceptional. He manages to constantly monitor each student's progress in such a way as to reinforce their progress. It is not a case of instructing as much as nudging and encouraging students to develop exciting interpretations. John usually knows where the interpretations should be headed, but he lets his students progress in a way that is also satisfying to them. As a consequence, his students develop a sense that they are professional colleagues, not mere students, and that they are part of a team working on the front lines of scientific investigation. John is one of those graduate student supervisors who knows how to balance relationships: he functions as a mentor, a critic, and a colleague who expects and is not bothered by criticism. He always has given value to ideas, rather than reserving his approval only for ideas that are momentarily accepted. His open mindedness is illustrated by his willingness to change his mind. John has been the recipient of several awards including: the Kirk Bryan award of the Geological Society of America and the Distinguished Service Award of the University of Colorado. He received a DSc from the University of Nottingham in 1978, largely based on his pioneering work in climate change. Recently he was appointed by the King of Norway to the Norwegian Academy of Science. His recent studies of Heinrich events provide the strongest evidence for the timing, source, and occurrence of such phenomena in the North Atlantic. He is truly a remarkable earth scientist and deserving of the AMQUA Career Award. Martha Andrews also deserves credit for this award. As many know, she is well known in her own right as a Polar Librarian and her interest in Arctic matters is an important shared interest. She and John have together visited such northern places as Baffin Island, Iceland, Murmansk, northern Finland, Schefferville (Quebec Labrador), Newfoundland, and in the fall of 1998, they will jointly visit the Norwegian university facility in Spitsbergen for a week of lectures from both. In the early days of research for the Canadian government, Martha had to endure long periods alone as John's field seasons in the Canadian Arctic were routinely 12-16 weeks in length with little or no chance for communication. In closing we note that John also exhibited prowess on the athletic field. He played Rugby Union for two years for the English under-19 team, and played for and captained his university 1st XV (1955 1959). The lure of playing professional rugby in England (Rugby League) was, for his fellow scientists, fortunately superseded by a scholarship offer to the McGill Subarctic Research Station. John, however, continued to play competitive rugby in Canada until age 30.

Larry Benson
with Art Dyke, John England,
Peter Clark, and Gifford Miller

Acceptance Reply

I am deeply honoured by this Award, and I wish to thank Larry Benson who nominated me for this honor and recognition by my valued peers. I should also thank Art Dyke, John England, Peter Clark, and Gifford Miller who provided some of the details for the citation.
I usually do not have a great problem in writing but I must confess that the writing of this acceptance note has not come easy. How does one thank all of whom have helped in a career without making the whole process look like a rerun of the Emmy Awards and making it so boring or trite that no-one will read it anyway! But the up-side is that few of us really have an opportunity to express, albeit briefly, the fact that our careers have relied heavily on the help, assistance, and love of others, and have probably not been carried on without some level of pain to those around us.

My parents never mentioned that the small family grocery and yeast business was mine to inherit. Professor Cuchlaine King, my geomorphology teacher at the University of Nottingham, taught me by example and her kindness what research was about. My friends and colleagues during my graduate years at McGill and Nottingham universities, and my professional years in the Canadian Government and at the University of Colorado, provided me with that vital base of friendship and peer support and criticism that we all need.Since 1968 when I became an alien (such a delightful term, but I was naturalized or is it neutralized in 1976) in the USA, one of my great enjoyments has been to supervise a large number (sixty or so) graduate students (Msc and PhD) at the University of Colorado. Largely because Boulder is such an attractive small city to live in, and because of the reputation of the University, I was fortunate to have a series of graduate students who were bright, articulate, and fundamentally nice people (some of you may not recognize this description!). Through the years, most often with the support of the National Science Foundation, we have been able to jointly investigate some important Quaternary problems, and in doing so often visit some of the most beautiful areas of the world. It is now at the point that during the annual Arctic Workshops, which I first organized nearly 30 years ago, I am delighted to see graduates of graduates of graduates attending and presenting papers and posters.

My rock throughout my career has been Martha, my wife and friend, and a colleague at INSTAAR. " Distinguished" careers, and home and family matters, are not automatically compatible, possibly the reverse, and Martha, Melissa, and Thomas deserve my total and unreserved thanks. At 60 years in age, I am not sure whether the Distinguished Career Award is a veiled hint that I should retire or not! Nevertheless, let me end with the following advice to all of you who have read the acceptance letter to this point: enjoy what you are doing; do not sacrifice all facets of your life on the alter of your career; do not take yourself too seriously; do not be afraid to be wrong, and if you are wrong in your research, admit it and move on.

John T. Andrews