Industry-Rice Earth Science Symposia (IRESS) - History of Rice Earth Science

DEPARTMENT OF GEOLOGY AND GEOPHYSICS (1985)

DEPARTMENT OF EARTH SCIENCE (2001)

1952 – 2015

In January 1952, Mrs. Olga Wiess provided an endowment to establish the Harry Carothers Wiess Chair of Geology as a memorial to her husband. As a result, Carey Croneis was invited to join the then Rice Institute as Provost and was named the first Wiess Chair, joining the faculty in January 1954. Croneis, with Associate Professor John A. S. Adams and Assistant Professor John J. W. Rogers, established a program of courses in Geology. The first senior class graduated in June 1955 and the first doctorate was awarded in 1958.

Since then nearly a thousand geologists and geophysicists have graduated from our Department. Now chaired by Richard G. Gordon, the Department has sixteen faculty and is expanding to eighteen. The Department is ranked among the best departments in the United States with the Geophysics specialty being ranked 12th in the U.S. Our alumni have gone on to distinguished careers in the energy and environmental industries and in academia.

The Keith-Wiess Geological Laboratories, completed in 1959, were thoroughly renovated a decade ago.

Recent Faculty Awards

Our faculty continues to be highly recognized for its research achievements. For example since 2000, members of our faculty have received many awards: A Penrose Medal, a Day Medal, a Donath Medal, and a Woollard Award from the Geological Society of America; two Powers Medals from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists; a Shepard Medal from the Society for Sedimentary Geology; two Clarke Medals from the Geochemical Society; an Emile Wiechert Medal from the German Geophysical Society; two Kuno Awards, a Luna Leopold Award, and a Paul Silver Award from the American Geophysical Union; a Ludger Mintrop Award from the European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers; two Packard Fellowships; and three CAREER awards from the National Science Foundation. Three members of the faculty are Fellows of the American Geophysical Union. The Department is consistently ranked in the top 25 Geoscience departments in the country and the Geophysics Specialty is ranked in the top 12.