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Preston Cloud: Peripatetic Paleontologist INTRODUCTION Bernard of Chartres, an 11th-12th century philosopher and teacher, said that we are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they and for a greater distance, not by any virtue of our own but because we are carried high and raised aloft by their stature. All of us have our geological heroes, those giants on whose shoulders we stand. To encourage recognition of these luminaries and to provide inspiration for students and young professionals, the GSA History of Geology Division presents Rock Stars, brief pro- files of our geological giants. If you have any comments on profiles, please contact Robert N. Ginsburg, University of Miami, RSMAS/MGG, 4600 Rickenbacker Causeway, Miami, FL 33149-1098, E-mail: [email protected]. —Robert N. Ginsburg, History of Geology Division Preston Cloud: Peripatetic Paleontologist J. Thomas Dutro, Jr., U.S. Geological Survey, Washington DC 20560-0137 Few scientists change the direction led him to hunting and hiking and scout- and focus of their entire discipline in a ing. He became an Eagle scout, and he In the field, north Bow River slope, Canada, 1968. lifetime, let alone every few years. Even graduated from Waynesboro High School fewer make the transition from bench in 1929. Cloud escaped the early depres- working, conscientious Cloud and made scientist to successful science manager sion years by enlisting in the Navy in certain that he was admitted to Yale as a and back again. Add a mission, in the 1930. The feisty young sailor released graduate student in geology with adequate waning stages of a career, to alert the pub- some of his frustrations through boxing, financial support. Cloud started graduate lic to the dual dangers of burgeoning pop- and he soon became bantamweight cham- work on brachiopods at Yale, supervised ulation and steadily decreasing natural pion of the Pacific Fleet Scouting Force. by Carl Dunbar, completed his dissertation resources, and you have the peripatetic Discharged from the Navy in 1933 in Cali- on the Silurian and Devonian terebratu- Preston Cloud (1912–1991). fornia, he spent that summer hiking and loid brachiopods in record time, and grad- working his way back east. uated in 1940 (the Geological Society of Early Years America published his dissertation as a Preston Ercelle Cloud, Jr. was born in Becoming a Paleontologist monograph in 1942). West Upton, Massachusetts, September 26, Cloud’s resourcefulness, drive, and After a year of teaching at Missouri 1912; he was the third of seven children abilities made him successful in college School of Mines, Cloud returned to Yale in a family headed by an itinerant engi- and graduate school. He took any odd job for postdoctoral work, but in 1941 he was neer-draftsman. By the late 1920s, the he could find in 1933, the depth of the recruited by Josiah Bridge of the U.S. Geo- family was in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania. Depression, and earned enough money for logical Survey. Cloud worked in a field Preston Cloud loved the outdoors life that his first semester at George Washington party studying manganese deposits in University. Maine as part of a wartime mineral explo- There, his mentor was Ray Bassler, a ration program. This appointment began part-time professor and curator of paleon- an association with the USGS that lasted tology at the National Museum. Bassler, until his death half a century later. The impressed by Cloud’s enthusiasm and abil- next year, Cloud was appointed party ity to absorb information rapidly, found chief of the Alabama bauxite project. work for him at the museum. By his sec- In 1943, Cloud accepted an invita- ond year, Cloud was working full time as a tion to join Virgil Barnes of the Texas technician and attending classes at night. Bureau of Economic Geology in the Ellen- He also impressed G. Arthur Cooper, burger Project, studying the stratigraphy world-famous paleontologist and stratigra- and sedimentology of this important early pher, and became a preparator in the pale- Paleozoic carbonate complex. The result- ontology laboratory; there he absorbed ing monograph established Cloud as a car- Cooper’s lore and skill in studying fossil bonate stratigrapher and paleogeographer; brachiopods. Despite full employment at these disciplines were added to his paleon- the museum, Cloud completed his B.Sc. tologic background and developed later and graduated in 1938. In that same year, when he was party chief of the USGS work he published his first paper on bra- on Saipan during the geological study of chiopods with Cooper, beginning his the Trust Territories in the late 1940s. career in paleontology. From 1946 to 1948, Cloud was profes- Cooper had called Yale Professor sor of invertebrate paleontology at Har- Charles Schuchert’s attention to the hard- vard, filling the vacancy left by the death Cloud in the U.S. Navy, about 1931. 16 GSA TODAY, August 1999 of Percy Raymond. He resumed work on 1968, as professor of brachiopods and the Ellenberger biogeology, he manuscript, but was discouraged by the resumed studies on the lack of support for expanding the teaching origin of life and Pre- and research facilities in Cambridge. He cambrian physico- resigned and returned to the USGS in chemical conditions 1949, to become chief of the Branch of that made organic evo- Paleontology and Stratigraphy. lution possible. By 1974, he had con- Survey Years vinced the USGS direc- Cloud was the major influence in tor, his old friend developing careers of many young paleon- Vince McKelvey, to tologists in the USGS for a quarter-century build and equip a after World War II. A hard and exacting unique “clean labora- taskmaster, Cloud organized a paleontol- tory” at Santa Barbara ogy and stratigraphy unit that acted as a for the study of early ready-response team for inquiries about microorganisms, and paleobiological and sedimentological to rehire Cloud as the problems. Burgeoning USGS activities, head of a project to reflecting the increase in minerals explo- carry out the research. ration after 1949, required, in Cloud’s Together with a long- view, an expanded cadre of specialists held and expanding who could take on any and all challenges. concern over popula- He scoured the rosters of other USGS tion growth and natu- branches for people who could be useful ral resource conserva- for his new branch. With the full backing tion, this work filled of Chief Geologist Bill Bradley, Cloud had his very active life these people transferred and, in some until his death, in instances, retrained to fit into his organi- 1991, of amyotrophic zation. At the same time, he recruited lateral sclerosis (“Lou more promising young graduates to fill Gehrig’s disease”). gaps in his plan. With these swashbuck- ling tactics, he increased the size of the Cloud and the branch from about 15 to more than 60 in Cosmos six years. Cloud’s persistence built an After leaving the internationally recognized paleontologic USGS in the 1960s, research organization that was the pride of Cloud focused his the USGS for a quarter-century. energy on developing Preston Cloud in the late 1980s. After a decade, Cloud decided to revi- hypotheses about the talize his research in carbonate rocks, par- origin and evolution of ticularly those of biogenic origin, includ- life on Earth. Essential to this research for action between general perception of a ing reefs, and he set to work completing were his paleontologic expertise and threatening situation and the onset of cri- studies, begun in the late 1940s, of Pacific appreciation of geologic time. His work on sis or even catastrophe has become dan- atolls. This interest in marine carbonates carbonates had involved him in the study gerously small.” The world situation since led him to initiate and organize the first of the Precambrian, including the geo- 1978 has only become more threatening— USGS programs in marine geology. Now, chemistry of early oceans and atmo- not less so. three decades and two reorganizations spheres. Much of his work after 1974 cen- later, marine geology is a major program. tered on the pre-Phanerozoic Earth, and Coda But Cloud missed the USGS decision- his conclusions are presented in Cosmos, Preston Cloud’s research interests making maelstrom of the early 1960s. One Earth, and Man published by Yale Univer- were kaleidoscopic—from invertebrate morning at coffee in his lab, he suddenly sity Press in 1978. paleontology and brachiopod systematics interjected, “I just can’t get back to atoll Cloud’s realization of the vulnerabil- to carbonate petrology and coral reef ecol- problems; my telephone doesn’t ring any- ity of life on Earth grew as he reflected on ogy, to marine geology and oceanography, more!” It was clear that he would soon the human impact on the environment. to Precambrian stratigraphy and the origin leave the USGS. He also knew, from his early work on min- of life, and finally, to concern for the eral resources and later studies of energy whole Earth environment and our future Off To Academe sources and pollution, that sustainability relationship to it. He was a brilliant, ener- Cloud took an academic post about as was a major problem for the future if getic, and feisty researcher, teacher, leader, far away from the oceans as he could get human tendencies to ravage Earth were and friend. in North America. From 1961 to 1965, he not curbed. He made several projections of was at the University of Minnesota as full natural resource needs as related to the For Further Reading professor of geology, chairman of the exponential population growth over the Cloud, Preston, 1978, Cosmos, Earth, and man: A short history of the universe: New Haven, Connecticut, Yale Department of Geology and Geophysics, last decades of the 20th century, summa- University Press, 372 p.
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