Earth Scientist Receives Top International Award
Bergstrom--at right--receiving Digby McLaren Award at official ceremonies in Australia
Earth Sciences Professor Emeritus Stig M. Bergstrom received his field’s top honor this past weekend: the 2012 Digby McLaren Award from the International Commission on Stratigraphy for his long record of significant contributions to his field. Award ceremonies were August 11 in Brisbane, Australia, at the 34th International Conference on Stratigraphy.
Although Bergstrom is formally retired, he can be found doing research and writing—activities he greatly loves, in his Orton Hall office every day.
Currently, he is involved in several topically and geographically wide-ranging projects and is cooperating on studies with leading geoscientists around the world.
His active projects include: work on Ordovician-Silurian d13C chemostratigraphy in Baltoscandia, China, Malaysia, Thailand, Argentina, and North America; and, Conodont and graptolite biostratigraphy in North America, China, and Baltoscandia.
Looking at the use of 18O in conodont apatite as a paleothermometer for Ordovician seawater temperatures in North America and Baltoscandia; and, the significance and chemical composition of Lower Paleozoic K-bentonites; Middle and Upper Ordovician biodiversity dynamics in Baltoscandia.
Analyzing aspects of the significance of the occurrence of fossil meteorites in the Ordovician of Baltoscandia and China.
Clearly, the word “retired” is not in Bergstrom’s lexicon.
Throughout his career, Bergstrom has accrued a variety of important and impressive awards for research: a Fulbright Scholarship; an Honorary Doctorate from Lund University, Sweden; the Hadding Prize (Swedish Geology Award); the Raymond C. Moore Medal from the SEPM (US award in stratigraphy-paleontology); the Gold Medal of the Faculty of Sciences, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic; and the Pander Gold Medal (international award in conodont research).
But his teaching duties have never taken a back seat to his research. The three Graduate Students’ Distinguished Teaching Awards Bergstrom has received attest to that.
Additionally, the results of Bergstrom’s research have been published in close to 500 publications.
Retired? Not so much.
