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The 2005 Joseph A. Cushman Award
Barun K. Sen Gupta |
Dr. Barun K. Sen Gupta received the Joseph A. Cushman Award for Excellence in Foraminiferal Research on October 18, 2005, during the Cushman Foundation reception at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Salt Lake City, Utah. The award is in recognition of his many contributions to our understanding of modern and Cenozoic benthic foraminifera. Barun has enjoyed a long and distinguished career as a researcher and educator that extends over more than four decades.
As Barun takes his rightful place in a pantheon of Cushman Award recipients that begins with Fred B Phleger and Ruth Todd (1980) and extends to Martin A. Buzas and Richard K. Olsson (2004), it is appropriate to consider the role his work has played in the development of our discipline. The field of foraminiferology has now left behind its earliest phase dominated by taxonomic description, and gone on to see the establishment of stratigraphic and distributional frameworks and their integration into ecological, biological, evolutionary and geochemical studies, with the result that Foraminifera now play a vital role in our understanding of oceanographic and climatic change—fields that are critical to mankind’s stewardship of the Earth. Barun has played a leading part in the research thrust that has so positioned our discipline, and it is appropriate that we honor him for this contribution. Barun was born in Jamshedpur, India and educated at the Calcutta University, Presidency College, receiving B.Sc. with honors in 1951 and an M.Sc. First Class in 1954. In 1960, he went to Cornell University to work on larger Foraminifera with W. Storrs Cole and completed an M.S. degree in 1961. Returning to the Indian Institute of Technology, he completed his dissertation in 1963, a work that established the taxonomy of the larger foraminifera of the Paleogene of Kutch and the first standard biostratigraphic zonation for these strata. After brief service as an apprentice geologist with a cement company, Barun began his career in academia, advancing from assistant lecturer to lecturer at the Indian Institute of Technology from 1955 to 1966. Barun moved to Canada with wife Poree, daughter Sagaree, and son Upal in 1966 to take a position as a National Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellow at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. With this move, Barun shifted his focus to an area that would remain central for most of his subsequent research: the ecology, distributional patterns, and adaptations of Quaternary foraminifera. While at Bedford, Barun published a series of papers and reports on modern foraminifera, including the Foraminifera of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and published some of the earliest work we would now call "environmental micropaleontology" in studies of polluted estuaries of New Brunswick and Maine. Barun joined the geology faculty at the University of Georgia in 1969 as an assistant professor. He continued his research on modern foraminifera and, including a number of students in this research, documented the distributional patterns of benthic foraminifera in the Mid-Atlantic Bight relative to a variety of pertinent environmental parameters. Barun was tenured and rose through the ranks to Professor at the University of Georgia before leaving to join the geology faculty at Louisiana State University in 1979. While at LSU, Barun developed a strong research program that involved projects by numerous graduate students. His research focus turned to the Gulf Coast and Caribbean regions. He and his students applied fossil foraminiferal distributions to the interpretation of Cenozoic paleoceanographic events of the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico, and the evolution of sedimentary basins in Central America and the Greater Antilles. More recently, Barun has concentrated on foraminifera from hydrocarbon seeps and coastal low-oxygen settings, and together with colleagues Paul Aharon and Joan Bernhard, has participated in a series of Alvin dives to seeps in the Gulf of Mexico and on Blake Ridge. His research has been well funded from both government sources (e.g., NSF, NOAA, DOE, NATO) and industry (e.g., Shell Offshore, Exxon USA). He received the W. Storrs Cole Memorial Research Award of the Geological Society of America in 1995. In recognition of his many significant contributions to research and instruction at LSU, Barun was appointed the H.V. Howe Distinguished Professor of Geology and Geophysics in 2001. In all, Barun has published more than 90 articles, book chapters, and reports. Notable among these is the book Modern Foraminifera(1999), which he organized and edited in addition to authoring several chapters. Barun received a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award to work at the University of Utrecht (The Netherlands) in 1992–93 and has been a Visiting Professor or Visiting Scientist at the University of Bordeaux (France), the Petrobras Research Center (Brazil), the University of São Paulo (Brazil) and the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil). In 1999, while in Brazil, Barun taught a short course on foraminiferal ecology and paleoecology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and collaborated with Eduardo Koutsoukos and his staff investigating the Quaternary history of selected continental slope basins of southeastern Brazil using benthic foraminifera. Barun has served as major professor for 19 M.S. and 7 Ph.D. students, and his former students have found their professional homes in academia, industry, government, and other fields. In addition to his success in shaping the careers of post-graduate researchers, Barun developed a great reputation as an undergraduate teacher, and he included undergraduates in his research programs. In recognition of these accomplishments, Barun received the "2002 Outstanding Educator Award" from the Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies as well as the 1988 Burlington-Northern Foundation Award for Excellence in Introductory Undergraduate Teaching. Barun has also made his mark on the foraminiferal research community through his many years of service to the Cushman Foundation for Foraminiferal Research. He served as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Foraminiferal Research from 1976 through 1984 and as a member of the Board of Directors from 1985 to 2003. During his term on the board, he held the offices of President (1987–88) and Vice-President (1986–87). In recognition of these contributions, Barun was named an Honorary Director in 2003. Extensive as they are, a catalogue of Barun’s many accomplishments can only hint at the lasting impact he has had on his field. His mentorship of students will leave a legacy that is not easily measured. The seeds he planted in his students are now yielding (at least) third-generation fruit as his student’s students train the next generation of specialists. Those who have had the good fortune to make the transition from student to colleague under Barun’s tutelage will know his interests extend far outside his field. He is not only multilingual, but has a deep love of music, travel and literature. It would be daunting to have a mentor of such intellectual vigor and diversity of accomplishment if these qualities were not tempered by the grace and gentleness of his humor. Late-night, after-dinner conversations with colleagues like Barun are one of the greatest joys of professional meetings; his presence at such moments turns them into treasured memories for the participants. After a few such evenings, one learns that Barun rarely talks of "studying forams"; instead, he talks of "doing science" with an enthusiasm that is clearly undiminished since his career began. Of course we are all scientists, but we are also specialists in foraminifera, and it is reassuring that the leaders in our field, leaders like Barun, see beyond specialty to the role we play in the larger scheme of things. FOOTNOTES Susan T. Goldstein, Anthony J. Arnold and Peter P. McLaughlin, Jr. Journal of Foraminiferal Research, January 2006, v. 36, no. 1, p. 1 |
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