User:Virgilius158/Parker E. Calkin

Parker Emerson Calkin (April 27, 1933 - June 10, 2017) was an American glacial geologist.

Education
Calkin attended high school in Ridgewood, New Jersey and graduated in 1951. He then went on to attend Tufts University, following in the footsteps of his father. There, he pursued a major in geology and participated in the university's track team. By 1955, he had become a co-captain of the team which, under his partial direction, won the Eastern Collegiate Track and Field Championship. Individually, he won the 440-yard dash at the same competition. In 1952, he travelled to Greenland to work as a student assistant for the U.S. Weather Bureau. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in geology in 1955. He received a Master's degree in the same field in 1959 from the University of British Columbia, and in 1963 he received a PhD from The Ohio State University for his dissertation titled 'Geomorphology and Glacial Geology of the Victoria Valley System, Southern Victoria Land, Antarctica,' which he wrote following the expeditions he had gone on to Antarctica with the university's Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center. His work in Antarctica also resulted in him being awarded the Antarctica Service Medal, and was honoured with a namesake; Calkin Glacier in Antarctica's Taylor Valley is thought to still be intact.

Career
Calkin began teaching at the State University College at Buffalo in 1963 and stayed there until 1965, at which point he moved to SUNY Buffalo, the State University of New York at Buffalo. Over the course of his career, he directed five PhD dissertations and 36M.A. theses, received thirteen National Science Foundation research grants, and published over 90 articles, about half of which dealt with the Antarctic or Arctic regions. In 1986, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University. After retiring from his role as a professor, he and his second wife, Harriet Simons, moved to Boulder, Colorado in 1998, where he was an Affiliate of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR). Even after his retirement, he continued his work in Glacial and Quaternary Geology.