Hollis Dow Hedberg

Hollis Dow Hedberg was an American geologist born September 29, 1903, in Falun, Kansas, who died August 14, 1988, and who worked for the Lago Petroleum Corporation from 1926 and the Gulf Oil Corporation in Venezuela from 1928 to 1968 before becoming a professor at Princeton University from 1959 to 1971. He revolutionized stratigraphic classification and rock correlation procedures, showed that rock dating could proceed without the aid of fossils, identified the La Luna Formation as a major petroleum source, and produced regional interpretations of the eastern Venezuela basin that remain standard references; he also chaired Project Mohole from 1962 to 1963 and influenced United States offshore petroleum policy. He served as president of the Geological Society of America in 1960, received the Sidney Powers Memorial Award in 1963, the Mary Clark Thompson Medal in 1973, the Wollaston Medal in 1975, and the Penrose Medal in 1980.