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   from the issue of December 2, 2004

     
 
Treves plays major role in growth of geosciences

 BY TOM HANCOCK, UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS

Along the way in his 45 years at Nebraska, professor Sam Treves' research has taken him from the Antarctic to the "basement" rocks of Nebraska.

 
Sam Treves retired from UNL in march as a professor of geosciences, but he remains active in research and teaching.
 Sam Treves retired from UNL in march as a professor of geosciences, but he remains active in research and teaching.

He has been a stalwart advocate for the Department of Geosciences, including shepherding the move of what was then the Department of Geology from Morrill Hall to Bessey Hall, which offered more room for research.

Treves officially retired in March but continues as an emeritus professor, teaching courses in mineralogy and petrology. He also is curator of geology, watching over the rock and mineral collection of the State Museum. He continues research into igneous petrology and the Precambrian geology of Nebraska.

Treves earned his doctorate from Ohio State University in 1959. He came to Nebraska in 1958, where he has worked ever since. From 1958 to the present, he has obtained 17 grants from the National Science Foundation for field work in Antarctica and Greenland.

Treves has seen wholesale changes in the Nebraska campus since his arrival. The university had only 8,000 students back in 1958. Across from Andrews Hall, on the east side of 14th Street, were houses, a drug store and a coffee shop. A man raised chickens at 16th and Vine streets. The Nebraska Geologic Survey was in the old Nebraska Hall, which was where Hamilton Hall is now and was one of the brick buildings that made up the original university block.

"UNL was a sleepy little place without a great research tradition," said College of Arts and Sciences Associate Dean Peter Bleed. "(Treves) was the kind of person that made this a different university."

One of Treves' early interests while a doctoral candidate at Ohio State was the geology of the Antarctic. Ohio State University was one of the data reduction centers for the International Geophysical Year of 1957-1958, a time when scientists worked together to look at the Earth in general. At Ohio State, the particular interest was in glaciology. Researchers who were on glaciological traverses in Antarctica came to OSU to interpret their data, then produce publications.

To make up for a shortfall in glaciologists, geology students, mostly undergraduates, were given short training periods and sent to gather information about the snow and ice in Antarctica. Treves was asked to work up the geologic data the students had gathered.

Bill Long, one of those students, arrived at OSU with specimens from the Horlich Mountains of an ancient glacial deposit that made it possible to incorporate Antarctica into a continental drift scenario.

"This was very exciting," Treves said. "We put together a request to the National Science Foundation after the International Geophysical Year and in 1959 were granted leave to go work in Antarctica on these deposits."

Treves worked in Antarctica in the 1960s and 1970s. The first year in Antarctica, Treves worked at McMurdo Station on local material, with an emphasis on volcanic rocks. The next year he went to the Horlich Mountains and worked on granites and diabase dikes.

"That started my whole involvement with the Antarctic. Because of my interest in the volcanic rocks, we then got subsequent grants to work on those rocks. People wanted to know when glaciation started on Antarctica. It became clear that surface rocks wouldn't reveal that, so a drilling program was put together."

Treves was asked to head up the drilling of holes in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica to get information about sedimentary sequences. He agreed and went back each year in early September and returned in December and January.

"Sam was the chief liaison between the scientists, military and NSF for drilling to take place," said geosciences professor David Harwood. "There is even a geological feature named for him: Treves Butte."

The Antarctic drilling program of which Treves was a part was the progenitor of a current Antarctic drilling project called ANDRILL, an international scientific program in the Antarctic to recover climate and ice sheet history of Antarctica. Harwood leads the management of ANDRILL, which is a continuation of the technological and scientific developments of Treves' work in the early 1970s with the Dry Valley Drilling Project, Harwood said.

After the last drill hole of the DVDP project was complete, the drilling rig was carried out onto the floating sea ice to see if it would work there in water. It did, and ANDRILL is still using floating ice as a platform for drilling, Harwood said.

For the last 20 years, Treves has been working on Precambrian rocks in Nebraska, which are more than 500 million years old. These rocks form the "basement" upon which all younger sediments rest.

"Sam was always one to joke that everything else (above the Precambrian) was just overburden," geosciences professor David Loope said.

In addition to his research, Treves has been lauded for his administration of the department. He served as department chair from 1964 to 1970 and 1974 to 1989. He was associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences from 1989 to 1996. Loope and others said Treves spearheaded the move of geosciences from Morrill Hall to Bessey Hall in the late 1980s. More than just a change of address, the move gave the department more room for research and teaching than was available in the tight quarters on the fourth floor of Morrill.

"He did a great job in building a strong department in all areas," Loope said. "As a junior faculty member, I heard that newcomers had to teach all the courses no one else wanted to teach. Treves was on the forefront of giving junior faculty a semester off from teaching so they could do research. That was something people would point to. He was ahead of the curve in mentoring junior faculty."

Professor Sam Treves in the Horlich Mountains on moraine Ridge, Antarctica. Courtesy of Professor Treves.
 
Professor Sam Treves in the Horlich Mountains on moraine Ridge, Antarctica. Courtesy of Professor Treves.

 

Through it all, Treves has maintained his lab skills, said geosciences chair Norm Smith. "He is very, very good with a microscope - without peer," Smith said.

"I have appreciated Sam a lot for his long view of things, his self-effacing good humor, a good guy for wise counsel who has been through the wars," Smith said.

Treves has continued in Morrill Hall to watch over the rock and crystal collection, for which he is the curator, in the State Museum. He still has a hand in teaching undergraduates. He continues to do public service work by, for example, meeting with people who bring in rocks and minerals they want identified.

"I think he is the best department head I have had anything to do with," Bleed said. "We worked on a variety of issues and I learned a good deal. I admired how consistent and hard working and what a great advocate for his program he was."


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