A great honor has been bestowed on Bremen Professor Gerold Wefer: The US American Society for Sedimentary Geology recently awarded him the marine geologist the Francis P. Shepard Medal for outstanding achievement in the area of scientific research. The society stressed in particular his research on sedimentation processes along the continental margins, i.e. the coastal waters bordering the deep sea. There was also praise for Wefer‘s work on researching the climate history of the Atlantic and adjacent continents with the aid of deep-sea sedimentary deposits.
“The award is especially important for me”, says Gerold Wefer. The former Director of MARUM recalls a stay many years ago in Californian La Jolla. “After obtaining my doctorate, in 1979 and 1980 I worked for a while at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, where I visited Francis Shepard, who was already retired by then, in his laboratory. It was quite different to today’s high-tech facilities and in those days there were very few computers around”, “In their place the results of previous expeditions were documented on sea charts and seismic profiles spread out on lots of large tables.”
Wefer built up the Faculty of Geosciences at the University of Bremen
A few years later the marine scientist, who was born in Jaderberg, took up a professorial appointment at the University of Bremen, where together with a small but brilliant team of colleagues he built up the faculty of Geosciences with its strong orientation to oceanography. The first big breakthrough came in 1989 when the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) [German Research Foundation] supported the founding of a Collaborative Research Center. Under Wefer‘s leadership, Bremen marine scientists studied sediment cores taken from the ocean bed of the South Atlantic in order to gain a better understanding of the region’s climate history. Further milestones of Wefer’s career included the foundation of MARUM, which was awarded the status of a DFG Research Center in 2001 and elevated to an Excellence Cluster in 2007.
Dissemination of scientific knowledge to the public at large always a priority
Over 200 articles in journals and countless books bear witness to the researcher’s scientific productivity and creativity. Wefer never lost sight of the task of interesting a lay public in his scientific work. Other achievements that stem from his initiatives include the ‘Science Summer 2002’ in the Year of Geosciences in Bremen, the coordination of ‘Bremen, City of Science’, and the opening of the Bremen House of Science in 2005.
Who was Francis Parker Shepard?
Francis Parker Shepard (*1897 – † 1985), who lent his name to the award, was a US-American sedimentologist who among other things carried out research on the underwater canyons off the coast of California. After studying at the University of Chicago he spent the rest of his life in research. In 1945 he was appointed Professor of Marine Geology at the University of California, where he worked at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla.
