Yale Bulletin and Calendar

November 8-15, 1999

Volume 28, Number 12

Karl M. Waage

Karl M.Waage, renowned for
his geological discoveries, dies

Karl M. Waage, 83, noted paleontologist and former director of the Peabody Museum of Natural History, died on Oct. 18 at Connecticut Hospice in Branford.

The scientist taught at Yale for 40 years before retiring in 1986, held the Alan M. Bateman Professorship in Geology and Geophysics, and was curator in invertebrate paleontology at the Peabody Museum.

Professor Waage's interests were focused on 65- to 140-million-year-old rocks and fossils of the Cretaceous seaways in the North American interior. His early research developed from work he did during World War II for the U.S. Geological Survey, when he explored the hills of Alabama for bauxite and high-alumina clays -- minerals important to the war effort.

Post-war mapping of fire clays along the Front Range of Colorado ultimately expanded into a clearer understanding of the stratigraphy (sedimentary layering) of the Lower Cretaceous Dakota Group and its relationship to the underlying dinosaur-bearing Morrison Formation in Colorado and Wyoming.

His primary contribution, however, stemmed from his Princeton University senior thesis in which he described some ammonites (animals related to the chambered Nautilus) from the Upper Cretaceous Fox Hills Formation of Wyoming. Renewing interest in those rocks in 1956 he spent the rest of his professional career working out their biostratigraphic details, making paleoenvironmental reconstructions and revising ammonite systematics. To do this he made extensive, well-documented collections in South Dakota and Wyoming.

His last manuscript, on 5000-year-old fossils from West Haven, Connecticut, was submitted for publication on Oct. 6, just 12 days before he died.

Professor Waage was described by his students as a devoted teacher. "Karl was very supportive of everyone," says geologist Susan Kidwell '82 Ph.D., who went with him and two other graduate students to conduct field work during the summer of 1977. "He stressed classical methods, but was also very open to new methods and ideas -- he encouraged students to go in their own direction." Kidwell, now a University of Chicago professor who teaches geology and evolutionary biology, says she often passes on what she learned from Professor Waage to her own students.

Neil Landman '82 Ph.D, now a curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, adds, "Karl was very enthusiastic about field work and turned on dozens of students to the complexities and excitement of doing geology in the west."

Karl Mensch Waage was born in Philadelphia in 1915. He received a bachelor's degree in 1939 and a doctorate in 1946 from Princeton University, joined Yale's department of geology as instructor in 1946, rose to full professor in 1967, and was departmental chairman from 1973 to 1976. He was director of the Peabody Museum from 1979 to 1982, and a fellow of the Geological Society of America.

Professor Waage is survived by his wife, Elizabeth King Waage of North Branford; sons Jonathan King Waage of Rehoboth, Massachusetts and Jeffrey King Waage of Windsor, England, and four grandchildren. Memorial contributions may be made to Connecticut Hospice, 61 Burban Dr., Branford, CT 06405.

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