Late Cenozoic of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego (eBook)

Calvin John Heusser (1924–2006)

A Life Devoted to the Quaternary of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego

Professor Calvin J. Heusser, Cal for all his friends, was born in North Bergen, New Jersey, USA, on September 10, 1924.

He obtained his Bachelor of Science (1947) and Master of Science (1949) degrees in botany at Rutgers University, and later, his PhD degrees both in botany and in geology at Oregon State College (1952).

While he was a university student he was drafted and he fought in World War II, in the European theater as a rifleman, 137th Infantry, 35th Division, where he took part in the Battle of the Ardennes, where he was wounded in one of his legs, receiving the Combat Infantry Badge, and the Battle Star and the Purple Heart medals. Cal was very proud of his participation in that battle, though he was not usually willing to talk about his European memories, certainly due to the sadness of the long war.

His teaching and research career is outstanding, startingas a teaching fellow at Rutgers University (1947–1949) and continuing as a research fellow at Oregon State College (1949–1952). After completing his education, Cal joined the American Geographical Society as a research associate, from 1952 to 1967, and as such, Cal was on his first scientific expedition to South America and Patagonia in 1959.

Then he became an associate professor at New York University (1967–1971), the renowned college of downtown Manhattan, where he stayed until his death. He achieved professorship in 1971, until 1991, when he formally retired and he was honored as Professor Emeritus of this university. In fact, he never retired from science and he continued working, together with Linda, his beloved wife and colleague, in their own laboratory in his gorgeous house in Tuxedo, New York, bounded by his dearly loved forests and the Appalachian, with a large garden where wild deer usually roam to feed on the lawn. He really esteemed those beautiful animals and he was full of pride about his neighbors from the wild and the peaceful tranquility of his home, in spite of being adjacent to the Big Apple.

His main fields of research were the Quaternary vegetationand phytogeography of North Pacific North America and, particularly, the southern end of South America in Chile and Argentina. He was very interested in Quaternary climates and glaciation of the middle latitudeson both hemispheres. He developed original techniques on the quantification of climatic parameters used in modeling and different aspects of paleoclimatic theory. Strictly in botanical terms, he studied pollen and spore morphology, particularly in relation to plant systematics andevolution.

His activity in professional organizations was skillful and competent. He had been in the editorial board of several major journals, such as Ecology (1957–1958) and Quaternary Research (1970–1976), and contributed as a reviewer to many others. Being one of the most prestigious members of the editorial board, Cal constantly supported and helped me as Editor of Quaternary of South America & Antarctic Peninsula (1983–1999). He had been Head Editor of Torreya (1971–1977), President of the Editorial Board of the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club (continued by Journal of the TorreyBotanical Society) (1975–1976) and Associate Editor of Radiocarbon (1987–1999).

He had been a Theresa Seessel Fellow at Yale University (1952–1953), a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial FoundationFellow at Universidad de Chile (1962–1963), a fellow of the Fulbright Commission at Universidad de Chile, Santiago (1962–1963), and a visiting fellow (1985) and a life fellow (since 1986) at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge. He received the David Livingstone Centenary Medal of the American Geographical Society (1987).

His publication record is outstanding, with benchmark books such as Late-Pleistocene Environments of North Pacific North America (American Geographical Society, Special Publication, 35, 1960), Pollen & Spores of Chile. Modern Types of the Pteridophyta, Gymnospermae and Angiospermae (University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 1971) and, recently, Ice Age Southern Andes: AChronicle of Paleoecological Events (Elsevier, 2003). He also published more than 175 papers in refereed journals, some of which are major contributions to the palynology and paleoclimatology of North Pacific North America and most significant for us since it is highly pertinent to the nature of this book, southern South America.

The following biographical highlights, mostly based in his personal notes and vitae, portray a long and talented scientific career centered on stratigraphic palynology. I am deeply grateful to Linda Heusser for giving authorization to use these writings, some of which have been published previously.

At Rutgers University, being a chemistry major and while completing undergraduate work, Cal came in contact with Murray Buell, who had come from North Carolina State to the Department of Botany at Rutgers. In Cal’s own words, “Murray was friendly, unassuming, and accessible. A fine teacher, he was a person I greatly respected and was inclined to emulate. His knowledge of botany was in-depth and broad, and his enthusiasm and love for field work most infectious. At the University of Minnesota, he had been a student of William Skinner Cooper, famed for his work on plant succession following glacier recession in the Canadian Rockies and Glacier Bay, Alaska. During 25 yrs at Rutgers (1946–1971), Murray was exceedingly industrious, guiding 39 students through their doctorate degrees and 23 through MS degrees”. Cal reserved a great admiration for his advisor through his entire life.

Once, at the time of spring break, Cal traveled with Murray Buell to collect sediment cores in Dial Bay in South Carolina. Cal’s job was to cut brush along transects into the interior of the bay, which turned out to be an unforgettable adventure sloshing through knee-deep water infested with snakes. During this trip to the bay, Buell asked Cal if he would like to be a teaching assistant in botany, concurrently working toward an MS in the department. For Cal, this was the opportunity that he had been looking forward to since he returned from the war, and thus he wholeheartedly accepted.

Before beginning graduate work in the fall of 1947 at Rutgers, Cal traveled in the summer with the Buell family (three adults and two children in a two-door 1936 Ford) on an astonishing trip from Massachusetts to Minnesota. In summer, Buell taught at the University of Minnesota Biological Station at Lake Itasca, so that this was a chance for Cal to benefit as a student at the station not only from courses in ecological field methods and aquatic plants but also from exposure to the flora and vegetation of Midwestern United States.

Buell generated his initial interest in paleoecology. Cal did an MS thesis having to do with the “History of an estuarine bog at Secaucus, New Jersey” (1949). Plant fossil macroremains, the focus of the work, traced sea-level change and progressive demise of a freshwater white cedar bog. Frequented in the early nineteenth century by the botanist John Torrey, the site in addition to white cedar contained black spruce and larch. Although Buell had become active working with fossil pollen, Cal did not involve himself in palynology until later, when he went to Oregon State University in Corvallis, to work for a PhD.

Three years at Oregon State (1949–1952), as both a teaching and research assistant, provided him a wider botanical horizon through contact with plants of the Pacific Northwest. Cal was fortunate because Henry Hansen, with whom he had come to study, became Dean of the Graduate School the year Cal arrived. Because he was busy with administrative work, as usually happens, Cal was much on his own. Cal would major in botany, but because his thesis was to be in palynology, he need tominor in geology, which meant picking up necessary credits in earth science courses.

Cal chose “Pollen profiles from Southeastern Alaska” for a dissertation. This decision came about upon his joining the American Geographical Society’s Juneau Icefield Research Project in southeastern Alaska as plant ecologist. During 1950 and 1951, the project enabled him to collect cores for the thesis from muskegs in the...