Hollis Dow Hedberg

Hollis Dow Hedberg (May 29, 1903 – August 14, 1988; nickname: "El Doctor Hedberg") was an American geologist specializing in petroleum exploration. His contribution to stratigraphic classification of rocks and procedures is a monumental work which received universal acceptance. The firm he worked for, the Gulf Oil Corporation in Venezuela, trusted his findings and explored what had until then been uncharted territory. As a result, they reaped huge benefits from their petroleum findings. Hedberg taught at Princeton University from 1959 until his retirement in 1971. He was awarded the Mary Clark Thompson Medal by the National Academy of Sciences in 1973. In 1975 he was awarded the Wollaston Medal by the Geological Society of London. Hedberg won the Sidney Powers Memorial Award in 1963.

Early life Hollis Dow Hedberg was born on 29 May 1903 in Falun, Kansas. He belonged to a small Swedish community and his parents lived on the second floor of the house. At that time Kansas experienced the worst flood in its history. His father, Carl August Hedberg, born in Sweden came to the US as one of four children. His mother, Zada Mary Dow, was of Scottish-English descent. He had an older brother, James, and a younger sister, Carol.

His initial years were difficult; he worked in the fields. He learned how to whistle as a boy at age 8. Overtime, he developed a skill for whistling, which became one of his hobbies and traits later on in life, while ploughing fields with horses. He came from a musical family: his father played violin, his mother the piano, his brother James the viola, and he played cello. They were fond of reading books to one another.

Career His first employment in 1926 was as a petrographer with the Maracaibo laboratory. He worked in this capacity for Lago Petroleum Corporation, a Venezuelan subsidiary of Standard Oil. In June 1926, he travelled to Maracaibo, his first business trip outside the United States. He wrote letters to his mother every other day as he was very close to his family. Fond of travel, he went on tours almost every week. When in the Misoa River area, on the eastern part of Lake Maracaibo, he almost lost his life in a flash flood in the Ryan River during an intense rainstorm. Based on his field investigations during this period he propounded the theory that correlation and dating of rocks could be undertaken without the help of fossils which he documented in a paper titled "Some Aspects of Sedimentary Petrography in Relation to Stratigraphy in the Bolivar Coast Fields of the Maracaibo Basin, Venezuela" (1928)". — (Juan Chacin, President and CEO (retired) of PDVSA

As he was not enthused by the work he was doing, he terminated his contract with Lago Petroleum and returned to New York in March 1928. He then decided to join the geological laboratory of the Venezuelan Gulf Oil Company in Maracaibo as a stratigrapher. But his ship was diverted to Port Arthur and in the confusion he returned to New York on a train and took another ship. On board he met Frances Murray, whom he later married. In 1928, he became head of the geological laboratory. His awards list is long and impressive and includes Sidney Powers Medal and the University of Kansas Distinguished Service Award in 1963 and the Geological Society of America's Penrose Medal in 1980. He and Frances Murray had a happy married life of 56 years. His wife who helped him in his work contributed to a well knit family. Three of his children also hold Phd degrees.

Hedberg was a keen athlete and continued his interest of gardening in his vegetable garden in his holiday home in Cape Cod. Occasionally he played the accordion and also took part in square dancing with his wife. He died on 14 August 1988. ISEM had proudly housed the Hollis D. Hedberg Library. The Institute for the Study of Earth and Man at Southern Methodist University maintains the Hollis D. Hedberg Library, a collection of Hedberg's 18th to 20th century travel and geology books on Venezuela and Latin America.