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IN MEMORIAM
FRED MASON BULLARD
Fred Mason Bullard passed away suddenly and quietly
at his home in Austin on Friday, July 29, 1994. He was born July 20,
1901, on Kickapoo Indian lands, Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, where
his father had homesteaded.
Bullard obtained BS and MS degrees in geology at
the University of Oklahoma, where he also played the saxophone in the
university band. He received a PhD from the University of Michigan in
1928. He worked for several years as field geologist for the Oklahoma
Geological Survey. He joined the faculty of the Department of Geology
at The University of Texas at Austin in 1924, where he had a professional
career in teaching and research for 70 years. He was actively working
in his office on the last day of his life.
Professor Bullard was known as an outstanding teacher
of large introductory geology courses for more than four decades. A
colleague once calculated the thousands of students that Bullard had
taught and concluded that he probably taught the largest number of introductory
geology students in North America. Many of these students made careers
in geology and many became pioneers in the petroleum industry. He was
greatly admired and loved by his students, colleagues, and friends,
and kept in touch with many of them over his long professional life.
The span of his career offered him the chance to teach the children
and grandchildren of his early students, and during his travels he constantly
met people who came up to him to say, "Dr. Bullard, I was a student
in your class in 19--."
Bullard also taught a course in volcanology and in
the 1920s regularly taught the summer geology field course in Central
Texas. Some of his experiences were told in the newsletter of the Department
of Geological Sciences.
Bullard served as chairman of the geology department
from 1929 to 1937. During this period the State of Texas implemented
the building program for the central core of UT buildings surrounding
the Main Building, which helped celebrate the 1936 Texas Centennial.
Fred Bullard researched the architecture of geology buildings at prominent
universities and then designed and helped draw the plans for the first
geology building; he selected the furnishings as well. He designed the
fossil frieze that decorates the building's exterior, indelibly and
forever signifying its dedication to geology (although it is now designated
the Will C. Hogg Building). At the time that Bullard served as chairman,
he was only an associate professor and thus not eligible to vote on
budgetary matters; such matters were reserved for full professors.
Dr. Bullard served as a visiting professor at a number
of schools through the years, including the University of Michigan,
Columbia University, the National University of Mexico in Mexico City,
Vassar College, and Northern Arizona University. He served in the Visiting
Scientists Program of the American Geophysical Union in 1966 and 1968-69.
Other foreign assignments included appointments as a Fulbright Research
Scholar in Italy, 1952-53; Fulbright Lecturer in Peru, 1959; and Chief
of Party of The University of Texas contract group at the University
of Baghdad, Iraq, for two-and-a-half years, 1962-1964. This group was
sent under a U.S. Agency for International Development program to provide
"technical assistance in improving education in the sciences and
engineering" to the University of Baghdad. Nine professors and
their families were in the group under his care, four in the sciences
and five in engineering.
On his first day in the classroom in the University
of Baghdad, Dr. Bullard introduced himself and urged students to raise
their hands if he used a word they did not understand. All nodded in
agreement. He took a breath and began, Geology is the science of the
Earth, whereupon a hand went up. The student asked, What is Earth,
professor? Dr. Bullard recalled thinking that it was going to be a
long, long semester.
Fred Bullard regularly attended the annual meetings
of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. Even in his later
years one could always find Fred on the front row of a particular talk
or symposium and ready with a question. Fred was named Distinguished
Lecturer of the Association an impressive three times: 1943, 1945, and
1954.
Fred s early research included geologic mapping
in Oklahoma and Texas, and studies in invertebrate paleontology and
meteorites. During World War II he published a classical study of the
heavy detrital minerals (those having high specific gravity) of Texas
beaches and the rivers supplying sand to them. Bullard s study showed
the value of heavy minerals in determining the source of sand along
Texas beaches.
Fred Bullard's interest in volcanoes was piqued while
on a U.S. Geological Survey expedition to Alaska in 1929, where he observed
an active volcano for the first time. This led to his appointment as
an assistant at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory in 1939, where he worked
under the famous volcanologist Dr. T. A. Jaggar. This provided him with
the background to do the seminal geologic research on the nascent active
volcano Paricutin when it erupted out of a sleepy cornfield in Mexico
in 1943. He wrote: "When Paricutin was born, I was teaching a course
on volcanoes at the National University of Mexico. I used it as a laboratory
for my students, and for the next seven years I spent a part of each
year at Paricutin studying the life history of this volcano. I studied
the volcanoes of the Central American countries from 1945 to 1957. In
1959, I extended my work to South America. In the summer of 1960, I
participated in the International Congress Field Trip to study the volcanoes
of Iceland. In 1962 I was a member of the International Symposium on
Volcanology in a study of the volcanoes of Japan.
"During the summer of 1963 I studied the volcanoes of Central Turkey
and the Greek Islands. During the summer of 1964 I visited the volcanic
areas of Africa, the Canary Islands, Madeira, and the Azores. During the
summers of 1965 and 1967 I taught volcanology in a National Science Foundation
Institute for high school science teachers at Northern Arizona University.
In the fall of 1965-66 I studied the volcanoes of the South Pacific region
(Philippines, New Guinea, New Britain, etc.) and attended the International
Symposium on Volcanology in New Zealand. During the summer of 1968 I was
on an International Geologic Congress Field Trip studying volcanics in
the Carpathian Mountains of Slovakia. During the summers of 1969 and 1970
I studied the "Great Rift" at Craters of the Moon National Monument,
Idaho."
Bullard's research findings and accumulated knowledge
became an original reference work on volcanoes entitled Volcanoes:
in Theory, in History, in Eruption, published by The University
of Texas Press; a revised and enlarged edition, including information
on the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, was published under the title Volcanoes
of the Earth. These books were best-sellers among the UT Press offerings.
One of the products of his studies of Paricutin was a film on that volcano,
which he showed once a year to a standing-room-only crowd in the Geology
Building auditorium.
In his early days at the University, Fred Bullard
helped organize and participated in the activities of professional geologic
organizations, including Sigma Gamma Epsilon and Sigma Xi. He helped
organize the Institute for Latin American Studies during the Roosevelt
"Good Neighbor Policy" days. He enjoyed lifelong membership
in the Kiwanis Clubs of Austin (being in "the Old Men's Group")
and, after retirement, the Retired Faculty Association. He was a Mason,
a Fellow of the Geological Society of America, and a member of the Mineralogical
Society of America, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists,
and Phi Beta Kappa.
<signed>
Larry R. Faulkner, President
The University of Texas at Austin
<signed>
John R. Durbin, Secretary
The General Faculty
This memorial resolution was prepared by a special committee consisting
of Professors Earle F. McBride (chair), William L. Fisher, and Clark
R. Wilson, Professors Emeritus Robert L. Folk, Ernest L. Lundelius,
Jr., and William R. Muehlberger, and James Underwood.
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