Robert L. Folk

Robert L. Folk was an American geologist who lived from 1925 to 2018 and spent most of his career at the University of Texas at Austin after joining its faculty in 1952, holding the Carlton Professorship of Geology from 1982 to 1988, renowned for developing the Folk classification of sedimentary rocks in 1959, a scheme for sandstones and carbonate rocks still in use today with only minor modification. He remained an active senior research scientist at the university own Bureau of Economic Geology after his 1988 retirement, and helped establish soft rock geology as a field of study. He received the William H. Twenhofel Medal in 1979, the Neil Miner Award in 1989, the Sorby Medal in 1990 and the Distinguished Educator Medal in 1997. He received the Penrose Medal in 2000.