PRESENTATION OF THE HARRELL L. STRIMPLE AWARD OF THE PALEONTOLOGICAL SOCIETY TO THOMAS E. WHITELEY

Abstract

It is a great pleasure to introduce Dr. Thomas Whiteley, the 2004 recipient of the Harrell Strimple Award for outstanding amateur paleontologist. Although not a professional paleontologist, Tom was always a scientist: as a chemist he had a highly successful career with Eastman Kodak in Rochester. Born in California, he worked his way eastward: after receiving a BA from the University of Colorado and a master's at the University of South Carolina he joined Eastman Kodak Research labs, in 1956. Following a brief stint in the US Army, he returned to school and received a PhD for his work on carbohydrate chemistry from The Ohio State University in 1960. Inevitably, Tom's interests led him back to Rochester and Eastman Kodak, where he eventually became associate director of the research labs. But already, by the early 1960s, Tom was being lured out on weekends into the fabulous outcrops of western New York, pursuing his avocation of paleontology and especially collecting and studying trilobites. During my early years at the University of Rochester I developed a great deal of respect and admiration for Tom Whiteley and quickly realized that he was a cut above most amateurs with his approach to field study, his meticulous documentation and cataloguing of fossils, and his outstanding photography. I clearly remember my first meeting with Tom when I was a beginning instructor at Rochester, in 1978. He invited me out to his lovely home to present a talk to the local mineral and fossil club; I drove out to Tom's house in a blinding snowstorm and nearly went off the road, arriving over an hour late. But he was very gracious, showed keen interest in my talk on obrution deposits, and suggested that he wanted to work on this topic himself. He showed me some of his …