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Ground Penetrating Radar |
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"The Hal Mooney Award is presented in recognition of scientific and technical excellence and innovation leading to the advancement of near-surface geophysics. This year’s recipient is Gary Olhoeft. The near-surface geophysics industry is fortunate to have crossed paths with the career of Gary Olhoeft. Gary is a hard-working, energetic, and aggressive scientist with a very broad and constantly expanding knowledge base whose professional efforts were destined to win recognition in whatever area they touched. His career started on the fast track right out of high school, as he attended MIT on a National Merit Scholarship. Five years later he held a Bachelor’s and a Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering. More importantly, it was at MIT that Gary first became involved in measuring the electromagnetic properties of geological materials. Before finishing at MIT, he had worked on geophysical research for mineral exploration, exposing him to induced polarization and electromagnetic methods, and had helped set up a laboratory in Houston with NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center for measuring the electrical properties of lunar samples. To put this in perspective, the Apollo 11 mission put the first men on the moon in 1969. Apollo 17 was the last manned mission to the moon, and it occurred in 1972. Gary was involved with NASA and lunar scientific experiments during an exciting time. It is interesting for us as geophysicists to note that most of what the astronauts were doing on the moon were geophysical surveys. They were placing geophones, gravimeters, and magnetometers, and setting up moon-penetrating radar antennas. At the age of 23, Gary was sitting as a peer among the scientists in charge of these tests. He remained a co-investigator with the NASA Lunar Sample Program until 1988, and still acts as a NASA consultant. It was also as a student in 1972 that Gary received a "Best Presentation Award" from the SEG. Gary followed his advisor at MIT, David Strangway, to the University of Toronto, and earned his Ph.D. there in two years. Interestingly, another young Ph.D. graduate who had earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Toronto was also working with NASA and was responsible for developing the interpretation of the Apollo 17 Surface Electrical Properties experiment. This was Peter Annan, who is also a recipient of the Hal Mooney Award. After his Ph.D., Gary spent just under 20 years with the U.S. Geological Survey, and the last 5 as a professor at the Colorado School of Mines. His professional accomplishments during this time are beyond impressive, and approach startling. The numbers give a sense of his energy: member of 18 professional societies, reviewer for 28 technical journals, close to 200 professional presentations, and over 140 published papers, supervised 17 graduate thesis, and held over 100 volunteer positions requiring scientific judgment; but the numbers don’t express the scientific contributions Gary has made to the near-surface geophysics industry to deserve this award. Gary’s petrophysical laboratory measurements on the physical, electromagnetic properties of rocks and minerals have provided us with an improved level of geophysical data interpretation. It is only through physical property studies such as Gary’s that we can move beyond simple anomaly hunting and generalized data interpretations to potential discrimination and identification of subsurface materials from remote geophysical measurements. By making these measurements and tying them through the theory to their effects on the data received from various geophysical surveys, he has helped us validate our methods and understand our responses. Toward this end, work performed by Gary decades ago is still increasing in relevance, and it may be another decade or more before we make full use of his contributions. As our instrumentation and computer analyses improve, so do our abilities to extract the detailed, frequency-dependent properties measured in the lab from the field data. I believe we are not yet aware of the extent of Gary’s contributions to near-surface geophysics. Many people who have met and worked with Gary (or had a paper reviewed by him) have experienced his intensity and forthright manner of expression. Those who know him better also understand that it is his dedication and concern, which extends beyond his scientific efforts to include the lives of colleagues, students, friends and family, that is at the heart of and basic to his nature. As an industry, we promote and advance our profession by constantly educating other scientists and the public on our technical capabilities. Imagine a room full of people exchanging ideas and opinions on any topic with even a remote tie to geophysics. If Gary is in the room, you will hear from him. His comments are always succinct and substantial, if maybe blunt. His presence and his intellect continually advance our scientific profession. Congratulations, Gary, on receiving this well-deserved award." -Mike Powers, Vice President NSGS/SEG |
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