PRESENTATION OF THE HARREL L. STRIMPLE AWARD OF THE PALEONTOLOGICAL SOCIETY TO CHRISTOPHER L. GARVIE

Abstract

It is a great pleasure for us to introduce to you Christopher L. Garvie, this year's recipient of the Strimple award for outstanding accomplishment in paleontology by an amateur. This is well-deserved recognition for his significant contributions to the paleontology of the Paleogene of the western Gulf Coast. Chris was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, and grew up in Hamburg, Germany, and London, England. He majored in Mathematics and Physics at the University of Aberdeen and was awarded a Special Merit Certificate in Mathematics upon his graduation. He has pursued a career in software development with extensive experience in aerospace systems design, simulation, and testing, and in a variety of manufacturing and financial applications. During his professional life, he has worked for a large number of major corporations in these fields in England, France, Germany, and in the United States. This has provided the opportunity for him, once he became interested in paleontology, to collect from classic sites and through a wide stratigraphic range. He collected his first fossil from the Eocene of northwestern Washington while living in Seattle. Soon afterwards, he was living in Munich and began to collect from the Solnhofen Limestone in Bavaria. The Altmuhltal is a delightful pastoral setting in which to look for fossils, but we also suspect that another strong incentive was …