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Helen Tappan Loeblich, professor emerita, and a major figure in the
paleontology community, passed away August 18, 2004. Born on October 12, 1917, in
Norman, Oklahoma, Helen went on to become an international leader in the field of
micropaleontology. She earned her BS degree in 1937 at the University of Oklahoma,
Phi Beta Kappa, and received the Sigma Gamma Epsilon Scholarship Award for
Outstanding Senior in Geology—an MS degree followed in 1939. It was during
this time at the University of Oklahoma that she met her soul-mate, Al Loeblich, Jr.,
whom she married on June 18, 1939, thus beginning a life-long scientific
collaboration that resulted in major advancements in paleontology. They transferred
to the University of Chicago where Helen received her PhD in Geology in 1942—both
her master’s thesis and doctoral dissertation were on Texas and Oklahoma
mid-Cretaceous foraminifera.
When Al received orders to report for military duty in 1942, Helen assumed all of his
teaching responsibilities, becoming the first woman faculty member of Tulane’s
College of Arts and Sciences. At the end of World War II, Al obtained a position as
curator of invertebrate paleontology and paleobotany at the United States National
Museum in Washington, DC. Helen resumed her earlier work with the United States
Geological Survey (USGS), this time with the Navy Oil Project in the Naval Petroleum
Reserve of the Alaskan North Slope.
In 1953 the Smithsonian Institution sent Al to Europe to collect foraminiferal
samples and to study collections in the major European museums as background for
Helen and Al’s work on the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology volume on
foraminifera. Helen was forced to take a leave of absence from the USGS, because of
their policy of not allowing their personnel to work outside the United States. She
obtained a Guggenheim Fellowship and—together with their four children and
Al’s mother—they spent a year traveling throughout Europe, collecting more
than two tons of rocks and examining many historical collections of foraminifera.
Helen illustrated with a camera lucida the type specimens they studied. From 1954 to
1956 Helen was an honorary research associate of the Smithsonian Institution and in
1957, the Loeblich-Tappan family moved to California where Al headed a
micropaleontological program at Chevron Oil Field Research Company.
Helen continued to work part-time for the USGS and in 1958 began teaching at UCLA,
becoming a full-time faculty member in 1966, full professor in 1968, and vice chairman
of Geology from 1973 to 1975. During her years at UCLA, Helen advised, mentored, and
inspired numerous students, many of whom went on to achieve prominence in geology,
paleontology, micropaleontology, and palynology. Her graduate students specialized in
Cretaceous and Cenozoic foraminifera, Miocene diatoms, Cretaceous coccoliths,
Cretaceous and Tertiary dinoflagellates, chrysophyte cysts, and radiolaria, as well as
Paleozoic acritarchs and prasinophytes. Such a wide range of topics is testimony to
Helen’s breadth and knowledge in the fields of micropaleontology and palynology.
During her lifetime Helen served on many editorial and society boards as well as various
committees. She received numerous awards, including the 1982 Woman of Science Award from
the UCLA Medical Center Auxiliary, the Paleontological Society Medal in 1983, the Raymond
C. Moore Medal for “Excellence in Paleontology” in 1984, and the 1987 Woman
of the Year Award in Natural Science from the Palm Springs Desert Museum, to name a few.
Helen will probably be best remembered for her landmark papers and books as well as her
prodigious scientific output, both as sole author and in collaboration with Al. Helen
published 272 scientific papers and books, mostly with Al. A few of the most notable are:
Their 1957 paper “Correlation of the Gulf and Atlantic Coastal Plain Paleocene and
lower Eocene formations by means of planktonic Foraminifera” won Best Paper Award
in the Journal of Paleontology. The 2-volume Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology, Part C.
Protista 2. Sarcodina, chiefly ‘Thecamoebians’ and Foraminiferida (1964) is a
landmark publication in which they classified foraminiferida on the basis of external wall
characteristics. Their 2-volume book Foraminfiera Genera and Their Classification (1987)
is their magnum opus in foraminiferal research. In it, they revised foraminiferal
classification by considering the internal wall structure and studying the type-species
of almost all valid genera in the literature. This book received the 1988 Award of the
Association of American Publishers for the best professional and scholarly book in the
field of Geography and Earth Science. Helen was also very proud of her book The
Paleobiology of Plant Protists (1980)—it was voted the book publisher’s best
non-fiction book for that year.
Helen was an achiever of the highest order; her research and publications were rigorous,
scientifically grounded, and always first-rate. She was a superb writer and editor and
improved the manuscripts of numerous students and researchers. She demanded excellence,
not only from herself, but also from her students and colleagues. She instilled in her
students a strong work ethic and commitment to be the best they could. In spite of her
many scientific accomplishments and honors, Helen was extremely generous with her time
and expertise, and always had time for her students. Apart from her scientific
achievements, she was an excellent artist, illustrating all of her papers and designing
and creating printing blocks for their Christmas cards, which showed their current
research specimens adorned in a holiday theme. In addition, she designed bookplates for
their extensive library and designed the 50th Anniversary Stamp of the Society of
Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists (now the Society for Sedimentary Geology).
[Reed Wicander]
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