W. H. Bradley, premier paleolimnologist

Abstract

Profiles of Rocky Mountain Geologists – a continuing series All those lakes where the stars find themselves night after night, without ever changing: for so long I have thought of them. —William Stafford, 1979 Wherever we look there is a striving for deeper understanding of ever more complex problems and a corresponding realization of how much more we must learn …. —W. H. Bradley, 1963b Wilmot Hyde (“Bill”) Bradley (Fig. 1), son of a generous dentist (Bradley's words), husband of Catrina van Benschoten, father of two daughters and of paleolimnology, died of a stroke on April 12, 1979, eight days after his eightieth birthday. During the forty-eight years (1922–1970) Bradley worked for the U.S. Geological Survey, he achieved a place among the few—one of the very best and most honored geologists in the world. We Rocky Mountain geologists are especially indebted to him for the two dozen or so papers and monographs he wrote on the Green River Formation of Eocene age and for his other research on the region. Figure 1. Photograph of Wilmot H. (“Bill”) Bradley. Source: American Philosophical Society. Bradley's studies of nonmarine aquatic paleoecology and paleolimnology were far ahead of their time, as Erle Kauffman said long ago (McKelvey, 1981, p. 3). More than that, he was a transforming sedimentologist, an original force in marine geology, a paleontologist, a devoted naturalist, an inventive and caring administrator, and an exemplary man. Bill Bradley was born on April 4, 1899 in Westville, Connecticut—twenty-three years after John Wesley Powell (1876) published his Report on the geology of the eastern portion of the Uinta Mountains . It was the third year of William McKinley's presidency, a time of prosperity. Thanks to his mother and his aunt Carolyn, he roamed the meadows, marshes, and woods around Westville, learning to recognize and …