Pioneer of mathematical geology and an authority on the geology of the mid-continental United States.
Daniel (Dan) Francis Merriam, an American geologist best known as the 'Father of Mathematical Geology' for fostering the development of quantitative modelling in geology after the advent of digital computers, passed away on 26 April 2017 at the age of 90 in Lawrence, Kansas. He had been suffering for a few years with failing memory and was slowly declining into dementia.
Born in Nebraska to parents of Swedish ancestry, Dan was adopted, and raised by the Merriam family. After a varied early career which included distinguished service with the US Navy in the Pacific during WWII, Dan graduated in Geology at the University of Kansas and then spent two years with the Union Oil Company before joining the Kansas Geological Survey (KGS) in 1953.
The arrival of the first computer at the University of Kansas in the early 1960s sparked off his seminal work on computer applications in geology, further stimulated by a semester as Visiting Research Scientist at Stanford University and a year’s Fulbright-Hayes Senior Fellowship at Leicester University. Recognising the enormous potential of computing, Dan’s career and international profile leapt ahead.
Under Dan’s management (1963-1971), the Research Section of the KGS emerged as the international leaders in quantitative studies in the Earth Sciences.
He is quite rightly known as the 'Father of Mathematical Geology' as he has long been associated with the development of the subject and probably did more to promote the growth and success of the field than any other person. He helped found the International Association for Mathematical Geology (IAMG) during the dramatic events of the Prague Spring in 1968.
In 1971, he become the Jessie Page Heroy Professor of Geology at Syracuse University. Arising from Dan’s increasing national and international involvement in a fast-growing field, Syracuse became recognised as a leading centre for quantitative studies in the geosciences. Dan moved to Wichita State University in 1981 to become Endowment Association Distinguished Professor of the Natural Sciences - a post he held until 1991 - and as Emeritus Professor after that. His career turned full circle when he became affiliated with the KGS in Lawrence, Kansas, firstly as Senior Research Scientist from 1991 to 1997, then as an Emeritus Scientist.
He published more than 300 books, scientific articles and notes mostly on the stratigraphy, structure, tectonic evolution and hydrocarbon potential of Kansas and the application of computational methods to the geosciences.
Dan Merriam was an international scientist of the highest repute and received countless honours and awards such as the IAMG’s prestigious Krumbein Medal in 1981 and the Geological Society’s William Smith Medal in 1992.
His memory lives on through his wife of 71 years, Annie Merriam, their children Beth Ann, John, Anita, James and Judith, 10 of his 12 grandchildren, three great-grandchildren, five of six half sisters and one of three half brothers, along with the numerous friends, colleagues and students.
He was truly an inspiration to those who walked in his light, and will be sorely missed by so many.
Written by John Cubitt
- A longer version of this obituary may be read below. Editor.
Daniel Francis Merriam 1927-2017
Daniel (Dan) Francis Merriam, an American Geologist best known as the 'Father of Mathematical Geology' for fostering the development of quantitative modelling in geology after the advent of digital computers, passed away on 26 April 2017 at the age of 90 in Lawrence Kansas. He had been suffering for a few years with failing memory and was slowly declining into dementia.
Born in Nebraska to parents of Swedish ancestry, Dan was adopted, and raised by the Merriam family. After a varied early career which included distinguished service with the US Navy in the Pacific during WWII, Dan graduated in geology at the University of Kansas and then spent two years with the Rocky Mountain Division of the Union Oil Company before joining the Kansas Geological Survey (KGS) in 1953, initially working under the direction of the Raymond C Moore. He completed his PhD while working for the Survey and for the next 10 years or so enjoyed the diverse and interesting life of a survey geologist.
It was during this decade that he acquired much of the database from which has come a host of articles and books which established Dan’s reputation as an authority on the stratigraphy, structure, tectonic evolution and hydrocarbon potential of the United States Mid-Continent region.
The arrival of the first computer at the University of Kansas in the early 1960s sparked off his seminal work on computer applications in geology, further stimulated by a semester as Visiting Research Scientist at Stanford University and a year’s Fulbright-Hayes Senior Fellowship at Leicester University with Professor Peter Sylvester-Bradley. Recognising the enormous potential of computing and equipped with the field and subsurface database on the geology of Kansas, Dan’s career and international profile leapt ahead.
During his second career and under his management (1963-1971), the Research Section of the KGS emerged as the international leaders in quantitative studies in the Earth Sciences. Directly from this group arose Computer Contributions, an irregular publication of computer programmes which in turn, led directly to the creation by Dan of the international journals, Mathematical Geology in 1969, and, subsequently in 1975, Computers & Geosciences, both of which Dan edited for many years (along with another journal in the IAMG stable, Natural resources Research).
He is quite rightly known as the 'Father of Mathematical Geology' as he has long been associated with the development of the subject and probably did more to promote the growth and success of the field than any other person. He helped found the International Association for Mathematical Geology (IAMG, now renamed The International Association for Mathematical Geosciences) during the dramatic events of the Prague Spring in 1968. The IAMG was formed at a meeting on 22nd August 1968, by 20 scientists during the International Geological Congress in Prague, Czechoslovakia, The founding members just had enough time to organise the Society before the Soviet Union, whose tanks rolled onto the streets of Prague during the Congress, took control. The members then had to make a hasty and perilous exit from the country (more details can be found in Fifty Years of the IAMG, edited by B. S. Daya Sagar, Qiuming Cheng and Frits Agterberg, Springer Verlag, to be published in 2018).
In 1971, he moved from the KGS to become the Jessie Page Heroy Professor of Geology at Syracuse University, ironically a place he had once applied to study forestry, but had been unable to gain admission. At Syracuse, he became Head of Department but also found time to eagerly put into practice in the classroom all the new ideas and techniques he had developed at the KGS. Arising from Dan’s innovations and his increasing national and international involvement in a fast-growing field, Syracuse became recognised as a leading centre for quantitative studies in the geosciences. Dan moved to Wichita State University in 1981 to become Endowment Association Distinguished Professor of the Natural Sciences - a post he held until 1991 (and as Emeritus Professor after that). He also chaired the Department of Geology (1981-87) at a time when there were massive changes to academia, business and government. Dan said that he was witnessing what he regarded as the real change to geology – the introduction of the microcomputer.
During this period, he also took the opportunity to return to familiar geological roots in Kansas and his career turned full circle when he became affiliated with the KGS at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, firstly as Senior Research Scientist from 1991 to 1997, then as an Emeritus Scientist.
He has published more than 300 books, scientific articles and notes mostly on the geology of the US Midcontinent (Kansas in particular) and the application of computational methods to a variety of geoscience subjects.
As Ute Herzfeld said in her reminiscence about Dan in the IAMG Newsletter no 94 (June 2017): “Despite all his accomplishments, Dan was always humble and friendly, in equal ways to everyone around him. He would never expect special respect as a distinguished professor or president of an international association. On his field trips, he would talk to the barista in the coffee shop as easily as his students or colleagues and he was not worried by saying “Aren’t we all students?”."
Yet he was truly an inspiration to those who came into his shadow as I recollected in the book shortly to be published in his memory (op. cit.):
“As a second-year undergraduate at Leicester University at the time (1969), … I mentioned to Trevor (Ford, my tutor) that I would like to go on to undertake postgraduate work in computer applications in geology. In that case he said, you need to meet someone, and marched me out of his office and down the corridors of the Department of Geology. In a minute, we found the mystery person he wanted to introduce to me. He was striding down the corridor in cowboy boots, string tie and cowboy hat in his typical dynamic intimidating style, Dan Merriam. After brief introductions from Trevor, Dan talked about the Research Group at the Kansas Geological Survey and how I should undertake a PhD at Leicester University but with the first year paid for and spent at the KGS. “That will be OK with the Department, won’t it?” Dan said to Trevor and whether it was or not, the decision had been taken. Within a few months of whirlwind arrangements, I was on my way to the KGS and my career was underway (Dan subsequently took me to Syracuse University as well, so I have much to be grateful to this amazing charismatic and dynamic organiser for). This frenetic activity was typical of the rapid growth in the subject of mathematical geology and the IAMG at the time”.
Dan was always amazed at how fortunate he had been in life and wrote a few of his thoughts down in recent years:
"Another aspect of life that has always intrigued and amazed me is that someone would pay me to have so much fun. I have enjoyed my chosen career, with few exceptions, for the more than a half century. I had opportunity to travel the world, meet interesting people, working conditions have been good, colleagues friendly and helpful, supervisors excellent (with a couple of exceptions), and extras plenty. I feel that I had the opportunity to make a contribution and I hope that feeling is correct - only time will tell.
"I have worked with a variety of interesting subjects from armadillos to Zipf's Law; rocks in age from the Pleistocene (youngest) to the Precambrian (oldest); geographically travelled to see first-hand the geology from Arabia to Yucatán (I never got to Zanzibar), and worked with geologists from Bill Atkinson to Pete Zimmerman.
"Looking back on my life, it has been like reading a book or seeing a movie. It is like I was outside looking in on someone else's life except maybe it has been more vivid; maybe it all has been a dream and I will wake up one of these days. I can't think of another profession nor set of circumstances that I would consider to have been better or more rewarding, so my trip down the rocky road of life has been blessedly paved with few potholes and comparatively not too bumpy!"
Dan Merriam was an international scientist of the highest repute and received countless honours and awards. He was an Adjunct Professor at Emporia State University in Kansas as well as a visiting scientist at Stanford University, Dartmouth College, the University of Sydney in Australia, the Ecole des Mines in Paris, France and Geoforschungszentrum Potsdam in Germany. He was an Honorary Member of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, the Society of Sedimentary Geology, the IAMG, the Kansas Geological Society and Sigma Gamma Epsilon. He was a Senior Fellow of the Geological Society of America and a Fellow of the Geological Society of London. He received a gold medal from Hornicka’ Pribram (Czechoslovakia) in 1970, was appointed to the US National Commission for UNESCO by the US Secretary of State in 1979, was honoured by the IAMG with its prestigious Krumbein Medal in 1981, was awarded the William Smith Medal by the Geological Society in 1992 and the Haworth Distinguished Alumni Honors in Geology from Kansas University in 1995. These were in addition to the numerous presidential citations and certificates of recognition, appreciation or merit from several professional organisations.
Forgive me for a moment for going off on a slight tangent, but 1990 proved to be a momentous year for Dan and his family. His wife, Annie, had for many years been intrigued by family history and after charting her family back to the founding fathers of the United States, she turned her attention to Dan, which was naturally a problem as he had been adopted and knew nothing of his birth parents’ families or their history. Despite the obvious problems of confidentiality, she managed to locate relatives of both birth-parents and it turned out he had six half sisters and three half brothers in the USA along with numerous cousins back in Sweden. As a very gregarious individual, Dan enjoyed his new family tremendously and saw them regularly right up until his recent death.
His memory lives on through his wife of 71 years, Annie Merriam, their children Beth Ann, John, Anita, James and Judith, 10 of his 12 grandchildren, 3 great-grandchildren, 5 of 6 half sisters and 1 of 3 half brothers along with the numerous friends, colleagues and students. Dan also had a godson, Rowley Cubitt, and several namesakes, of all of whom he was particularly proud. They included not only those of family, but friends and colleagues.
- Daniel (Dee) Francis Merriam, II (son)
- John Francis Merriam (son)
- James Daniel Merriam (son)
- Martin Daniel Young (nephew)
- Daniel Anderson (son of colleague and friend)
- Frances Elizabeth Cubitt (daughter of colleague and good friend)
- Daniel Heckel (son of colleague and good friend)
- Daniel Cocke (son of a colleague and good friend)
- Daniel King (son of a colleague and good friend)
- Dan Yamamoto (twin) (son of a former student)
- Noëlle Frances Howe (granddaughter)
- Major Daniel Norman Merriam (grandson)
- Kaleigh Danielle Schultz (daughter of a former student, colleague, and good friend)
He will be truly missed by so many.
By John Cubitt