Robert L. Folk

Robert "Bob" Louis "Luigi" Folk (September 30, 1925, Cleveland, Ohio – June 4, 2018) was an American geologist and petrologist, specializing in sedimentology, sandstone petrology, and carbonate petrology. He is known for the 1959 eponymous Folk classification of sedimentary rocks, which, with some minor modifications, is still in use today. He is one of the founders of what is sometimes called "Soft Rock Geology". There he graduated in geology with a B.S. in 1946, an M.S. in 1950, and a Ph.D. in 1952. Folk married Marjorie Thomas in September 1946. In autumn 1951, Robert Folk, with his wife and son, moved to Houston, Texas, where he had employment as a sedimentary geology working for Gulf Oil Research. He was soon assigned to a field project in Pascagoula, Mississippi, where his second child, a daughter, was born. Folk was appointed in September 1952 as an assistant professor in the geology department of the University of Texas at Austin. However, Folk's interpretation of his empirical discovery is generally rejected by experts in bacteriology.

Awards and honors Robert Folk received in 1989 the Neil Miner Award from the National Association of Geology Teachers (NAGT) and in 1997 the Distinguished Educator Medal from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG).