Introduction: Honoring J. Fred Read

Abstract

James Frederick Read was born in Manchester, England in April 1944, however, he spent most of his youth in Perth, Australia. Fred earned his undergraduate (honors) degree from the University of Western Australia in 1966. Fred stayed on at the university to study modern and Pleistocene carbonates in Shark Bay with Brian Logan, earning his Ph.D. in 1971. The entirety of Fred’s Ph.D. was published in AAPG special memoirs. Fred continued at the University of Western Australia as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow studying the Devonian backreef, Pillara Formation in the Canning Basin of Western Australia. In 1973 Fred moved to Virginia to become an assistant professor in the rapidly expanding Department of Geological Sciences at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in Blacksburg. Fred was promoted to associate professor in 1978 and full professor in 1983. Fred taught at Virginia Tech for 38 years until he retired in 2012 and is now Emeritus Professor. He and his students published more than 120 papers, and he guided 12 M.S. students and 20 Ph.D. and postdoctoral students to complete their research during his tenure. Many of Fred’s M.S. students are leaders in carbonate research in the energy industry. Many of Fred’s Ph.D. students also became leaders in carbonate research in the petroleum industry (ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, etc.) and others went on to become faculty members at universities all over the United States (including Massachusetts Institute of Technology; California Institute of Technology; University of California, Riverside; University of California, Davis; University of New Mexico; and Texas A&M University) mentoring a new generation of carbonate sedimentologists and stratigraphers. Fred and his students made many lasting contributions in understanding carbonate platform morphologies, computer modeling of carbonate platforms, diagenesis, paleoclimate and paleooceanographic interpretations of carbonate platforms, and reservoir characterization. Fred and his students twice …