User:Alisa.serebrianaia/Helen Niña Tappan Loeblich

Helen Niña Tappan Loeblich (October 12, 1917 – August 18, 2004) was an American micropaleontologist who was a professor of geology at the

Helen Niña Tappan Loeblich
Born	(1917-10-12)October 12, 1917 Norman, Oklahoma
Died	August 18, 2004(2004-08-18) (aged 86) Anaheim, California
Nationality (legal)	American
Alma mater	University of Oklahoma, University of Chicago
Known for	fossil Foraminifera classification
Spouse	Alfred R. Loeblich Jr.
Scientific career
Fields	Micropaleontology, biostratigraphy
Institutions	University of California, Los Angeles
Doctoral advisor	Carey G. Croneis
Doctoral students	Jere H. Lipps, Tim Patterson

University of California, Los Angeles, a United States Geological Survey (USGS) biostratigrapher, and a scientific illustrator whose micropaleontology specialty was research on Cretaceous foraminifera.

She received a Guggenheim Fellowship award in 1953 and travelled to Europe to focus on her studies of foraminifera with her husband. She would also be awarded with multiple other titles and was recognized as the first woman professor in Tulane University.

Early life

Dr Helen Nina Tappan Leoblich was born on October 12, 1917, in Norman, Oklahoma. She came from a well-educated background. Her mother Mary Pearl Jenks Tappan was a math teacher at Cornell, and her father, Frank Girard Tappan, was a Dean of Electrical Engineering at the University of Oklahoma.

Helen would later study at the University of Oklahoma in a degree of science. It was during her studies when she met Alfred R. Loeblich Jr. which eventually amalgamated into a long lasting partnership and bond between the two. Helen Loeblich ended up graduating from the University of Oklahoma in 1937 and received her bachelor of Science degree. She was invited to Phi Beta Kappa and was rewarded with the Sigma Gamma Epsilon Scholarship Award.

A couple years after Helen graduated, she and Alfred got married on June 18, 1942, securing and locking their bond as well as growing their collaboration in their work and contributions to science. Their work would result in major breakthrough advancements in paleontology. Eventually, they transferred to the University of Chicago to which Helen would receive her Doctorate of Philosophy in geology in 1942.

At the halfway point of World War II, her husband Al was called into action to report for military duty in 1942. Helen then took over all of Al’s previous responsibilities which included teaching at Tulane University in New Orleans. This made Helen the first female faculty member of Tulane’s College of Arts and Sciences. She would end up taking this position and teaching for around a year from 1942 to 1943

Education

Tappan Loeblich earned her Bachelor of Science in 1937 and her Master's in 1939, both in geology from the University of Oklahoma. She received the Sigma Gamma Epsilon Scholarship Award for Outstanding Senior in Geology. Her master's thesis was on mid-Cretaceous foraminifera of Oklahoma and Texas. At the University of Oklahoma, she met her future husband and long time scientific collaborator, Alfred R. Loeblich Jr, in chemistry class, in 1939. Shortly thereafter they married and spent their honeymoon doing field work with their graduate advisor, in the Arbuckle Mountains.

Leoblich received her Ph.D. in 1942 from the University of Chicago, and her dissertation continued her master's work. She intended to work for an oil company. When her husband was drafted in 1942, Tappan Loeblich became the first female professor at Tulane University's College of Arts and Sciences. After the war they moved to Washington DC and Helen continued her work with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) on the NabyOil Project in the naval petroleum reserve of the Alaskan North Slope. In 1953 she was forced to take a break from her work with USGS due to her husband’s new work assignment in europe. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to support herself and her 4 children financially during her year in Europe. She and her husband collected foraminifera and later on illustrated with a camera-lucida the specimens they found. Over two tons of rock, from quarries and sites all over Europe, were shipped back to the U.S.A.

Research

While working on the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology, Tappan Loeblich's research partner and husband Alfred was stationed in Europe by the Smithsonian Institution, in order to do further research on Foraminiferal samples seen in European museums, and those he collected in the field. Due to the USGS and their policy of not allowing work outside of the US, Tappan Loeblich took a leave of absence in order to join her husband in Europe. During their travels, the pair collected many samples, and greatly extended their knowledge on Foraminifera.

Tappan Loeblich was known for her studies of Foraminifera, a single-celled organism that is capable of producing a shell called a test, usually made out of organic compounds, sand grains, and calcium carbonate depending on the species. The shells divide into chambers during growth, similar to the Ammonite. Foraminifera are useful in terms of biostratigraphy, as they show fairly significant evolutionally development, so different subspecies are found at different times.

• 
  Illustration of a foraminifera shell, published by Robert Hooke.

Tappan Loeblich became an honorary research associate of the Smithsonian institution, and moved to California to pursue a career with the University of California, where in 1966, she became a full time faculty member, and then the vice chairman of geology from 1973 to 1975. Her husband Alfred began work on a micropaleontological program at Chevron Oil Field Research Company.

Publications

Helen Tappan Loeblich, in collaboration with her husband, made significant contributions to the field of paleontology by authoring and co-authoring multiple articles in the prestigious Journal of Paleontology. Among their noteworthy publications, the 1941 article titled "New Arenaceous Foraminifera from the Woodbine Sand of Northern Texas” stands out as a seminal work. This article provides a comprehensive analysis of a recently unearthed clay formation and the diverse array of species it contains.

In 1980 Tappan Loeblich published a book titled The Paleobiology of Plant Protists. The book discusses Loeblichs study of plant-like organisms known as Protists. The book delves into the fossil record of plant protists, with the book providing valuable insight into ancient environments, climate change, and the evolution of Earth through the fossilized remains of ancient protists.

The 1984 publication Suprageneric Classification of the Foraminiferida (Protozoa). The 1984 publication refines the classification system Foraminiferida, by updating the analysis based on internal cellular structure and the influences they impact on their environment. The work was later refined by Helen Tappan Loeblichs joint publication with her husband, Foraminiferal Genera and Their Classification.

Awards

Tappan Loeblich received the Paleontological Society Medal in 1983, the Woman of the Year Award in Natural Science from the Palm Springs Desert Museum in 1987, the Raymond C. Moore Medal for “Excellence in Paleontology” in 1984, and the 1982 Woman of Science Award from the UCLA Medical Center Auxiliary.

Tappan Loeblich also worked on numerous editorial and society boards. She published a total of 272 scientific papers or books mainly with her husband. One of their most notable works was their 1957 paper “Correlation of the Gulf and Atlantic Coastal Plain Paleocene and lower Eocene formations by means of planktonic Foraminifera” which won the Best Paper Award in the Journal of Paleontology. Her book, “The Paleobiology of Plant Protists” (1980), was also voted “the best non-fiction book” for that year.

Contribution to Science

Tappan Loeblich became an essential figure in the Paleontology community. Apart from her outstanding accomplishments in Geology and Paleontology, she mentored and inspired numerous students during the time she spent teaching at UCLA. Helen's extensive knowledge in the micropaleontology and palynology field is characterized by her graduate students' wide variety of specializations, such as Cenozoic foraminifera, Miocene diatoms, Cretaceous coccoliths, Cretaceous and Tertiary dinoflagellates, cryophytes cysts, radiolaria, Paleozoic acritarchs, and prasinophytes. She had also worked on numerous editorial and society boards.

Tappan Loeblich is also known for her books, landmark papers, and her prodigious scientific output, Both as a sole author and collaborator. Her publications will be Helen's prominent landmarks for which she will best be remembered. Helen and Al published 272 scientific papers in their lifetimes. In 1957, Helen and Al won the Best Paper Award in the Journal of Paleontology after submitting their article "Correlation of the Gulf and Atlantic Coastal Plain Paleocene and Lower Eocene formations by means of planktonic Foraminifera." This award was one of many Helen received for their publications. Another substantial award that added to Helen's extensive scientific legacy is the Award of the Association of American Publishers for the best professional and scholarly book in the field of Geography and Earth Science, which she won in 1988 after publishing their two-volume book Foraminiferal Genera and Their Classification in 1987.

Tappan Loeblich instilled in her students a strong work ethic and commitment to try and be the best versions of themselves. Aside from publishing award-winning papers and books, Helen often put her work down and helped her students with their research. Her contributions to the community were not restricted to paleontology or geology but also to share her expertise and advise future students who would continue her example and work to improve the paleontology community. Besides inspiring her students and publishing award-winning papers, Helen was also an incredible artist. She illustrated all of her papers and even designed the 50th Anniversary Stamp of the Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists.

Later life and death

Most of Loeblich's achievements were accomplished alongside her husband and fellow researcher Alfred R. Loeblich Jr., whom she met in the University of Oklahoma, during her Master of Science degree in 1939. They married on June 18 of the same year, and had four children including Alfred Richard leoblich III, who took a doctorate in botany at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Tappan Loeblich's husband took up a teaching post at Tulane's College of Arts and Sciences in New Orleans, and was drafted into the US military in 1942. She taught in his stead, and became the first woman faculty member in the faculty's history.

After the war, Tappan Loeblich and her husband moved to Washington D.C., where they began new lines of research.

Both Tappan Loeblich and Her husband toured different countries including Europe, Eastern Europe, China, and Japan upon many government and university requests. When her husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, She retired early from UCLA in 1984 to care for her husband for almost 10yrs without any support, even though she had been through distress and had suffered from dementia. Tappan Loeblich and her husband were married after 55years when Alfred died of Alzheimer’s in 1994.

Loeblich developed a stroke just a year after her husband’s death on their fifty sixth anniversary. She was admitted to the hospital on August 15, what would have been her husband’s 90th birthday, and died three days later August 18, 2004 in California at age 86.