User:David Kernow/Raymond Thorsteinsson

(Royal Society of Canada, Willet G. Miller Medal 1973)

The nomination of Dr. Raymond Thorsteinsson for the Miller Medal is based primarily on his work on the geology of the Canadian Arctic, although he has made fundamental scientific advances that are recognized internationally in several fields. Dr. Thorsteinsson has worked in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago since 1947, and of all workers in that region he has made the greatest contribution to the elucidation of the geology of the Proterozoic and Paleozoic rocks.

His work is particularly characterized by its breadth and includes structural, stratigraphic, and biochronological histories of the enormously thick rock succession of the Islands and forms the basis of all future work. As a result of his studies the geological history and sedimentary column in the Islands are better understood than those in many areas of Canada that have been studied far longer. Few scientists have been fortunate enough to have been presented with such a challenge and opportunity, and few could have risen to and mastered such a challenge.

In addition, Dr. Thorsteinsson has supplemented his predominantly stratigraphic work by paleontological studies in several fields: in the Graptolites he has made fundamental advances and discoveries that have found their way into international treatises and textbooks and are regularly quoted in scientific literature; in the Ostracoderms (subclass Heterostraci), a class of extinct fossil fish, his studies are in the process of revolutionizing our ideas on the evolution of the early vertebrates; in the Fusulinaceans, a group of Upper Paleozoic foraminifera, he has established the most complete succession of faunal zones in Pennsylvanian and Permian rocks yet known. All of these studies result from an astonishing capacity for finding and laboriously and painstakingly collecting some of the largest and best preserved fossil faunas yet known.

His work has been published largely by the Geological Survey and includes five substantial memoirs and three bulletins, as well as many papers and very many geological maps at scales varying from 1/125,000 to 1/500,000. His maps of central Ellesmere and Axel Heiberg Islands, including twelve published in the last two years, make this region one of the best mapped areas of Canada.

During the last two field seasons, he has completed geological mapping of Cornwallis Island and all adjacent islands between Bathurst, Devon, and Somerset. Six 1:250,000 maps will be openfiled this spring. This work puts an entirely new interpretation on the structural evolution of this region, and will prove of paramount importance to petroleum exploration, both on and offshore.

Dr. Thorsteinsson has exerted a very considerable influence, not only on Arctic Geology, but on the general synthesis and interpretation of the earth's history in this country and throughout the world. In addition, the results of this devoted and single-minded unravelling of the history of a new region of the crust have been of incalculable economic importance. Descriptions of the geology and geological maps prepared by him and by others associated with him, have been directly responsible for bringing about the recent increase in activity in the search for petroleum in the Islands. Estimates by industry suggest that as a result this search has been accelerated by as much as twenty-five years.