The Cushman Foundation for Foraminiferal Research has selected William A. (Bill) Berggren as the recipient of the 1995 Joseph A. Cushman Award for excellence in foraminiteral research.

Bill was born in New York City. He attended Fordham Preparatory School and Dickinson College, a liberal arts school in pastoral southeastern Pennsylvania. After earning a Masters degree at the University of Houston, Bill earned a Ph.D. at the University of Stockholm. He completed a post-doctoral year at Princeton University, before spending two years as a research paleontologist with Oasis Oil in Libya. Although such international studies have marked his career, Bill settled in Woods Hole in 1965 where he has been a Senior Scientist since 1971. In addition, he continues to serve as an Adjunct Professor at Brown University. As an adjunct, Bill commuted on Fridays for over 20 years from secluded Cape Cod, Massachusetts to Providence, Rhode Island to spread the gospel of Cenozoic foraminifera. He has been an Adjunct Docent at the University of Stockholm for 30 years, a Research Associate of the American Museum of Natural History (New York), and a visiting professor at Madras University (India) and Universite Claude Bernard (Lyon, France). In 1989, he was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America, an Honorary Fellow of the Geological Society of London, recipient of the Mary Clark Thompson Medal, and has been a member of the U.S.-U.S.S.R. cultural exchange programs (1962, 1988) and a Visiting Scholar to the People's Republic of China.

Bill's scientific career began with a study of Danian planktic foraminifera, and his early publications established him as an authority on Paleogene planktic foraminifera. He established a solid taxonomic base for foraminiferal studies that provided not only a basis for biostratigraphic correlations, but also for his subsequent work on geological time scales. His underlying philosophy of establishing a taxonomic and phylogenetic base has continued throughout his career, and he has recently organized the Paleogene Planktic Foraminiferal Working Group of the Paleogene Subcommission of the IUGS. Bill's work on time scales made him a critical member of many international commissions and committees, including the current International Subcommission on Paleogene Stratigraphy.

Bill's contributions in the early days of planktic foraminiferal biostratigraphy had a unique international flavor: one of his first publications was the evaluation of U.S.S.R. planktic foraminiferal studies. Bill had the opportunity to be among the first U.S. scientists to visit the U.S.S.R., as part of a cultural exchange program during the peak of the Cold War (1962). While operating under the watchful eyes of the KGB, Bill brought the pioneering work of Russian and Polish micropaleontologists to the west. He published in Russian journals, having become fluent in Russian, and sponsored the first Russian micropaleontologist to emigrate to the U.S., Dr. Esfir Saperson. His exploits led him across six continents over the next thirty years. As he visited labs throughout Europe, North and South America, Asia, Africa, and Australia, Bill cross-pollinated scientific ideas like a big, bearded honey bee.

But home was always at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), where Bill was responsible for building a credible (at times incredible!) group in micropaleontology. At WHOI, he became involved in the analysis and interpretation of piston and gravity cores and established himself as a force in Plio-Pleistocene correlations, serving on innumerable International Association for Quaternary Research (INQUA) commissions and working groups. He also was one of the pioneers of the Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP), which was superseded by the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP). Bill was foraminiferal micropaleontologist on Legs 1 and 120 and Chief Scientist on Leg 12. He served on numerous JOIDES panels. He introduced his students to the DSDP and shepherded Anne Boersma, Dick Poore, and Paul Belanger through the Ph.D. program at Brown, and myself, Mike Kaminski, and Thomas Ehrendorfer through the WHOI/MIT Joint Program. Bill drilled the tenets of the Holy Trinity of Stratigraphy (Lithostratigraphy, Chronostratigraphy, and Geochronology) into his students, and we were converted to the doctrine of Hedberg.

When Bill is in Woods Hole, things in the lab are constantly in motion. Rushing into the lab in the morning carrying stacks of boxes, he races from building to building. At WHOI, he has worked with geophysicists like John Sclater, Bruce Luyendyk, and Joe Phillips integrating biostratigraphy and plate tectonics. Working with Charlie Hollister, Bill wrote a seminal paper (1974) in the then nascent field of paleoceanography, discussing the importance of plate tectonics and the opening of ocean gateways in "Commotion in the Ocean." Later studies carried him on regular visits to Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory where he worked with Dennis Kent, integrating biostratigraphy with the marine magnetic anomaly sequence and magnetostratigraphy. Working with Mike Kaminski and Felix Gradstein, he resurrected studies on agglutinated flysch-type benthic foraminifera in the early 1980s. His careful taxonomic work on Cenozoic cosmopolitan deep-water calcareous benthic foraminifera constituted the core of the atlas by van Morkhoven and others (1986) and subsequently led to the first benthic foraminiferal zonal biostratigraphy of Cenozoic bathyal and abyssal sediments (Berggren and Miller, 1988).

All of these facts are merely a prelude to noting two key points in Bill's career: his work on geological time scales and his sense of humor. Bill published the first detailed Cenozoic geological time scale in 1971, demonstrating a unique ability to synthesize a tremendous amount of information. His Tertiary boundaries paper (1971) provides an unparalleled historical and contemporary synthesis of the work done on Tertiary stratotypes since the time of Lyell. He subsequently produced a landmark paper (with John Van Couvering in 1974) integrating Neogene marine and non-marine correlations. The 1971 and 1974 papers were the standard until 1985. In that year, Bill published the first truly integrated magnetobiostratigraphic time scale. As noted by Nick Shackleton, the 1985 paper represents the first testable time scale because each point on the scale could be verified by additional magnetobiostratigraphic correlations. This "Old Testament" of 1985 stood the test of time for 10 years, much longer than the 2-3 year shelf life of current papers and ideas. The 1985 time scale admittedly became frayed in the early 1990's because of new information obtained by the Ocean Drilling Program, and by 1992 Cande and Kent revised the geomagnetic portion of the scale. However, Bill did not join the time scale of the month club and rush a new geological time scale into print. Rather, working with Marie-Pierre Aubry, he diligently (re)surveyed all of the calibrations of foraminifera and nannofossils to magnetostratigraphy and the current correlations of stages and boundary stratotypes. The resulting "New Testament" (Berggren, Kent, Swisher, and Aubry, 1995) establishes a new standard of geological time that will be superseded only by an astronomical time scale for the Cenozoic, a feat that will not be completed in this century.

The biblical theme of this testament to Bill Berggren illustrates not my craft as the writer, but the sense of scientific humor instilled in me by my former adviser. Bill takes his science as serious business, but he is not obsessed with it. He loves to make light of the foils and foibles of science and scientists. After all, it was Bill who first called our family of micropaleontologists the "High Priests of Time."

Socialization among scientists was as an important aspect of our education at the hands of Bill Berggren. Often at 5 o'clock in Woods Hole, the table cloth would replace the scientific papers stacked on the table, and discussions over beer or sherry would replace the microscopes and computers. Peering down a Zeiss binocular microscope at a new morozovellid would be supplanted by peering at a bowl of vanilla ice cream covered with cherry Peter Heering. On the road, Bill loves to lead an entourage of a dozen scientists to unusual (and usually excellent) restaurants to discuss the science of the day. At home, he is always the congenial host, although visits with Bill often bring on the unexpected. During my first visit to Woods Hole as a young prospective student, Bill introduced me to the beaches of West Falmouth during a blinding spring snowstorm. In my experience, Bill's zest for life and his sense of humor are unmatched by any scientist.

The New Testament of Bill Berggren will not be his last, as his work continues. However, it is fitting to pause now to congratulate and honor Bill Berggren on a unique career. His contributions to foraminiferal studies, paleoceanography, and our understanding and appreciation of geological time are singular, while his contribution to all of us for seeing the lighter side of science is unparalleled.

KENNETH G. MILLER
Department of Geological Sciences
Rutgers University

Journal of Forarniniferal Research, v. 26, no. 1, p. 1-2, January 1996

More information about W. A. Berggren:

http://www.whoi.edu/science/GG/dept/personnel/personnel_emeriti_berggren.htm