Colleagues, friends honor Vail, his contributions to earth science

Colleagues, friends honor Vail, his contributions to earth science
…………………………………………………………………

BY JADE BOYD
Rice News Staff

There’s nothing quite like a gathering of friends and family. But when they come by the scores from all over the world, it says something about the person being honored.

The Vail Fest Symposium held March 6-9 at Rice University spoke volumes about Peter Vail, the W. Maurice Ewing Professor Emeritus of Oceanography. The symposium honored Vail’s life and his lifelong contribution to the field of sequence stratigraphy, a field of study founded upon his breakthrough work in the 1970s. More than 350 close friends, colleagues and admirers attended, many traveling from other countries and some from as far as Australia.

“I have said it many times, but if there is one person in this department who will be remembered 100 years from now, it’s Pete Vail,” said André Droxler, associate professor of earth science and one of the organizers of Vail Fest.

Vail forever changed the discipline of stratigraphy in 1977 when he published a groundbreaking theory that described how global sea-level changes throughout Earth’s history had left tell-tale signs in stratified rock formations worldwide.

Vail had been working in Houston at Esso Production Research Co. — now ExxonMobil Upstream — since 1965, and he had developed the theory after years of scrutinizing seismic images of stratified rock formations worldwide. Vail recognized that bundles of strata, or sequences, appeared in cyclic patterns in the seismic record. And because Exxon had a wealth of well logs, seismic charts and other data from basins all over the world, Vail began to see that the major breaks in the strata occurred at the same point in time in different basins.

“Since it was happening globally, it had to be caused either by tectonics or sea-level change, and the patterns didn’t point to tectonics,” he said. Vail, who earned his Ph.D. at Northwestern in 1956, credits his academic adviser there, Larry Sloss, with planting the first seeds of the theory in his mind.

In a 1977 monograph for the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Vail and his colleagues at Exxon detailed the way that eustatic cycles, or changes in sea level, had created boundaries, or major breaks in the sedimentary record worldwide. The theory not only provided a framework for research geologists to build a realistic, predictive stratigraphic framework for their sedimentary rocks, but it also led to the creation of eustatic cycle charts that proved incredibly valuable for geologists hunting for oil.

The import of Vail’s work to the oil exploration industry is illustrated by the fact that a dozen oil companies made contributions to co-sponsor the Vail Fest, and ExxonMobil made a substantial commitment to co-host the event with Rice.

“I have said it many times, but if there is one person in this department who will be remembered 100 years from now, it’s Pete Vail.”

ANDRÉ DROXLER
Associate professor of earth science

Like most new ideas, however, Vail’s theories initially got a chilly reception in scientific circles, in part because they were based on proprietary data, which couldn’t be held out for scrutiny. Droxler recalled how his own academic adviser was reluctant to accept Vail’s theory in the late 1970s.

“After years of amassing data, what we have found is that Pete Vail was right about almost everything,” said Droxler.

Vail came to Rice in 1986, when colleagues in the earth sciences department learned that he was leaving Exxon. The day after he retired, Rice called with a job offer. Within a week, Vail was starting a second career in academia. Vail retired last June after 15 years of service. He said the thing he enjoyed most at Rice was working with students, which explains why he still is working with two graduate students in spite of his retirement.

Vail said one thing he enjoys about retirement is having more free time to spend with his family. Vail and his wife, Carolyn, will celebrate their 46th wedding anniversary this year. They have four children and seven grandchildren, including a recent set of twins.

But Vail still finds time to work. During a recent trip to Egypt, he delivered an address on the geology of the Arab world at the University of Cairo and taught a three-day workshop on sequence stratigraphy.

As for the festival in his honor, Vail didn’t have to worry about being overwhelmed by all the planning.

“It was great,” he said. “Other people took care of all the planning and headaches, so all I had to do was draw up the guest list and enjoy myself.”