Dr. Richard K. Olsson has received the Joseph A. Cushman Award for outstanding contributions to the field of foraminiferology. Dr. Kenneth G. Miller presented the award at a ceremony on November 9, 2004, during the Cushman Foundation reception at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver, Colorado. His summary of Dr. Olsson’s career accomplishments is given below.

Richard "Dick" Olsson stands as one of the most important of modern planktonic foraminiferal specialists. Along with William Berggren, Isabella Premoli Silva, and Hanspeter Luterbacher, Dick provided us an unprecedented view of planktonic foraminiferal biostratigraphy for the latest Cretaceous to Paleocene. Through the 1960’s and 1970’s, he contributed dozens of papers on planktonic foraminiferal biostratigraphy, paleobiogeography, evolution, and paleoceanography. While on sabbatical at Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich in 1971, he conducted fascinating studies on the wall structure and ontogeny of foraminifera that stand as hallmark achievements. Living and working in New Jersey, he also became the Dean of New Jersey Coastal Plain stratigraphy; by the 1980’s, he was a leader in applying sequence stratigraphic concepts to the coastal plain, using benthic foraminifera to infer sea-level and paleoenvironmental changes. In the 1990’s, he returned to the roots of his first paper and focused his research on understanding the nature of the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary.

Dick received an A.B. from Rutgers College in 1953 and a Ph.D. from Princeton in 1958. He attended the Yellow-stone-Bighorn Research Association field camp in Red Lodge, Montana, was a planktonic foraminiferal specialist on Deep Sea Drilling Project Leg 5, worked as a consultant for Humble/Esso Oil Corporation, and was co-discoverer of the Ambrosia Lake Uranium deposits. He returned to the "Banks of the Old Raritan" (Rutgers University) in 1960 and served for 21 years as department chairman (1975–1976 and 1977–1996). He still managed to crank out 36 papers while attending to this time-consuming task. His research interests include planktonic foraminiferal biostratigraphy and phylogeny, foraminiferal paleoecology and paleobathymetry, sequence stratigraphy of passive margins, and the K/T boundary.

After retiring in 1996, he only redoubled his research efforts, publishing 23 papers on a diverse series of topics. Central amongst these is the monumental Atlas of Paleocene Foraminifera. Leading a team that spans generations of foraminiferal workers, Dick and company have produced this seminal work, with the Atlas of Eocene Foraminifera near completion.

Dick’s service to the scientific community and Rutgers University are notable. He led the Department of Geological Sciences as it made the transition from a small, teaching-oriented department to a large, research-oriented one with integrated ties to the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences. During his career at Rutgers, he shepherded 17 masters students and 22 Ph.D. students, many of whom have led distinguished careers in industry. I was one of his undergraduate honors students, and some of the others include Bob Sheridan and Gene Gaffney. He served on eight different advisory committees to the state of New Jersey on diverse issues of radon, low-level radioactive waste, flood control, and groundwater pollution. He organized the Atlantic Margin Energy Conference in 1981 and the Northeast Geological Society of America meeting in 1989.

Hedbergella monmouthensis (Olsson). This species was first identified from an Upper Cretaceous locality in Monmouth County, New Jersey (Olsson, 1960). It is one of three planktonic foraminiferal species that survived the end-Cretaceous mass extinction event. Of the more than 30 species of latest Cretaceous planktonic foraminfera, Hedbergella holmdelensis Olsson and Guembelitria cretacea Cushman were the only other survivors. These Scanning Electron Micrographs were published in the Atlas of Paleocene Planktonic Foraminifera (1999), edited by Richard Olsson and others.

Still, it remains Dick’s legacy that he is amongst the best planktonic biostratigraphers, with experience ranging from the Cretaceous through the evolution of the first forms in the Danian to the modern ocean. You could always rely on Dick Olsson to provide precise and reproducible biostratigraphic data. He has an uncanny eye. His efforts have been critical to developing the taxonomic base that is the foundation of planktonic foraminiferal biostratigraphy.

 

Kenneth G. Miller
Rutgers University

 

from: Journal of Foraminiferal Research, v. 35, no. 2, p. 173-174, April 2005

 

More information about Richard K. Olsson:

http://geology.rutgers.edu/olsson.html