NORMAN GARY LANE: PRESIDENT OF THE PALEONTOLOGICAL SOCIETY (1987-1988) AND FOUNDER OF "FRIENDS OF THE ECHINODERMS" (1967)

Journal of Paleontology, Mar 2007 by Schopf, J William, Ausich, William I, Dodd, J Robert, Hall, Clarence A, Et al

NORMAN GARY LANE (1930-2006), president of the Paleontological Society (1987-88) and founder of "Friends of the Echinoderms" (1967), contributed to the lives of each of the authors of this essay. He was an excellent paleontologist, a very fine person, and our friend. He influenced each of us, in ways large and small, and through his wisdom, insight, and sheer human decency he helped each of us to become better scientists, better teachers, and better human beings. We are proud to number ourselves among a great many for whom Gary Lane was a role model.

INTRODUCTION

Gary Lane (Fig. 1 ) was born in French Lick, Indiana, on February 19, 1930. In his early childhood the family moved to Sidell. Illinois, where for many years his father owned and operated the small-town newspaper that served the local farming community. Following graduation from high school, Gary attended Oberlin College in northeastern Ohio-at that time and for many decades earlier regarded as among the most outstanding of all liberal arts colleges-from which he received his Bachelor's degree in Geology in 1952. Even in his student days Gary delighted in carrying out geologic field work. This, coupled with the accessibility of the kindly (if demanding) faculty of the Oberlin Geology Department, kindled Gary's interest in fossils and the history of life, just as it spurred on two of his classmates, E. G. Driscoll and J. A. Fagerstom, each of whom, like Gary, were later to become professors of paleontology.

Gary obtained his graduate education at the University of Kansas, where he studied with the distinguished paleontologist Raymond C. Moore (lead author of the famous Moore-Lalicker-Fischer textbook, the "Bible of Invertebrate Paleontology" in the 1950s and '60s). His Masters thesis (1954) was a study of the Lower Permian Grenola Limestone in Kansas. Though Gary's initial inclination was to work on Triassic cyclical sedimentation for his doctoral studies, R. C. Moore had other plans, strongly urging Gary to investigate crinoids (fossil sea-lilies), work that led to his 1958 doctoral dissertation: "The Monobathrid Camerate Crinoid Family: Batocrinidae." From this start, Gary developed a lifelong scientific interest in the study of crinoids, the most diverse and abundant group of echinoderms known from Paleozoic strata. While at the University of Kansas, Gary worked both for the Kansas Geological Survey and the Canadian Geological Survey, and in 1955-1956 he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Tasmania.

Soon after receipt of his doctorate, Gary and his new bride, n�e Mary Rooney, moved to the west coast where he joined the faculty of the Department of Geology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Gary was a core member of UCLA's highly regarded department, rising through the ranks to become Professor of Paleontology. In 1973, enamored by the richly fossiliferous strata of the mid-continent and the opportunities they presented for his research, he returned to his home state as Professor in the Department of Geology at Indiana University. Though he formally retired in 1994, he remained highly active as a Professor Emeritus, teaching in the Honors Program, pursuing his research, and writing about the history of paleontology.

THE UCLA YEARS

Gary Lane was, in the noblest sense of the term, a professor. Kind, unassuming, deeply knowledgeable yet full of fun, he was a superb teacher, both in the classroom and in the field. For some of the co-authors of this essay he served as an undergraduate or graduate advisor, for others, a departmental colleague, and throughout our various interactions he taught each of us lessons about paleontology, about the natural world, and about life in academia that have played an important role in our personal development. The following are three perspectives from Gary's 15 years at UCLA.

An undergraduate student's perspective (Ron Parsley).-"I first encountered Gary Lane in the spring of 1958, when I was a callow third-year student majoring in Geology at UCLA and he showed up in the department the semester before he was to begin his formal teaching duties. That semester, before he had officially come on board, he took a section of about 15 students in our large field geology course (102B) on a class exercise to map, in detail, Tick Canyon, a site well known to southern California geology undergrade of that era. During the course of this demanding exercise I discovered what an excellent teacher Gary was; all of us in his section benefited greatly from his help. From this association arose a lifelong friendship. Most importantly for me, he was the driving force that encouraged me to study invertebrate paleontology at the University of Cincinnati, at that time probably one of the best places in the country to do graduate research on primitive echinoderms."

A graduate student's perspective (Gary Webster).-"Gary was a great person to work under. He was always nudging you in an unobtrusive manner to do the best possible and gently pushing you to broaden yourself, to move in directions that would help you do a better job. He was never too busy to answer your questions or to help you find support for your research. He delighted in your new discoveries as much as his own. Although crinoids were his personal favorite, he was a paleontologist with broad interests and a solid knowledge of the entire field of paleontology and all it encompasses. He kept up with new developments in paleontology as well as other areas of geology and incorporated these into his lectures and working with his graduate students."