Yale Bulletin and Calendar

March 19, 2004|Volume 32, Number 22

John Rodgers

Geologist John Rodgers, specialist
on mountain ranges, dies

John Rodgers, the Silliman Professor Emeritus of Geology who mapped the bedrock geology of the state of Connecticut and who was known among colleagues and students as "Mr. Appalachian Mountain Man," died on March 7 at the age of 89.

Professor Rodgers' love for the shape and form of the earth's landscape developed from poring over plates of the world atlas in his childhood home in Albany, New York. By the 10th grade at the Albany Academy and after numerous visits to the old New York State Museum, he had decided upon a career as a geologist.

His quest in the field was to understand the origins and histories of mountains through the folded and faulted layers of sedimentary rock that make up much of their fabric. From fieldwork begun in the Appalachian Mountains of East Tennessee, Professor Rodgers developed "a detailed, first-hand, encyclopedic knowledge of the entire range from Nova Scotia to Alabama," says his colleague Leo J. Hickey, professor of geology and geophysics and curator of paleobotany at the Peabody Museum of Natural History.

"I collect mountain ranges," Professor Rodgers often said in describing his work.

In his 1970 book "The Tectonics of the Appalachians," considered a model of scientific writing, Professor Rodgers argued that the Appalachian mountain range actually had once extended south into Mexico and northwestern South America, and from northwest Africa through Spain and Great Britain to Norway and eastern Greenland -- thus lending early support to the theory of continental drift.

His concern with the dynamic processes that had shaped the Earth's surface was demonstrated in his 1985 "Bedrock Geologic Map of the State of Connecticut."

"This map was unique for its time," notes Hickey. "It showed how the seemingly stable floor of this rock-ribbed state records a history of lateral shift of vast sheets of rock over immense intervals of time."

Professor Rodgers also co-authored with Carl Dunbar the 1957 textbook "Principles of Stratigraphy," which described the process of reconstructing past environments and their spatial and temporal distribution through a study of the earth's sedimentary layers.

John Rodgers was born in Albany, New York, on July 11, 1914, to Henry and Louise (Allen) Rodgers. He received a B.A. in 1936 and an M.A. in 1937 from Cornell University, and earned his Ph.D. from Yale in 1944. His graduate school years were interrupted by his service from 1939 to 1946 in the U.S. Geological Survey and as a scientific consultant to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the Pacific Theater of Operations. He received the Medal of Freedom for his work on invasion planning (advising on the nature of beaches) and on surveys of natural resources in Japan and Okinawa.

In 1946 Professor Rodgers joined the Department of Geology at Yale. He became a full professor in 1962. He chaired the geology department from 1964 to 1967 and was a resident fellow of Branford College for 35 years.

He became assistant editor of the American Journal of Science in 1948 and was editor of the journal from 1954 until 1995.

In addition to his love of geology, Professor Rodgers developed two other passions in his early years that remained lifelong interests: the study of foreign languages and music.

While in high school, he had plunged into a primer on ancient Greek. Later, during his career as a geologist, he made use of his linguistic abilities to read the geological literature and give lectures in the languages of the many regions of the world where he studied mountain belts and expanded his theories on continental drift.

"[N]ot content to confine his research to a single mountain range, he and his students traveled the globe, enriching the science of geology with the idea that folded mountain belts share a set of basic similarities that are the result of a predictable set of forces acting upon them," says Hickey.

His attachment to music began with piano lessons as a child. In 1977, he produced a recording, "Harmonies," created in collaboration with his friend and Yale colleague Willie Ruff, a jazz musician. "Harmonies" was based on 17th-century German astronomer Johan Kepler's idea of the "music" of the planets. Once, while in the hospital, he told friends who had offered to bring him a tape recorder that he could "hear" all the music he wanted just by reading from the sheet music he had piled nearby.

In 1985, shortly before his retirement from the University, Professor Rodgers remarked in a Yale Bulletin & Calendar article, "I love the outdoors. I love mountain ranges, maps and geography. All my interests coalesce in geology." Professor Rodgers later recounted many of his personal, field and teaching experiences in his 2001 autobiography "The Company I Kept."

Former Connecticut state geologist Joe Webb Peoples, a long-time friend, described the Yale geologist in 1991 as "a revered teacher and expositor of his ideas of Earth history.

"He believed that geology was best learned in the field, with disputes carried out on the outcrop," added Peoples. "In this way he influenced a rising generation of students who went out to map many of the world's mountain ranges using principles that he had instilled in them."

For contributions in his field, Professor Rodgers was awarded the 1981 Penrose Medal of the Geological Society of America, the Prix Gaudry of the Geological Society of France in 1987, and in the same year, the Fourmanier Medal of the Royal Academy of Science, Fine Arts and Letters. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Geological Society of America, for which he served as president in 1970. He also belonged to the American Geophysical Union, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Academia Real de Ciencias y Artes Barcelona, Phi Kappa Phi, Sigma Xi and Phi Beta Kappa.

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