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Geological Society of America Memorials, v. 33, April 2004 27

William Christian Krumbein, father of computer geology, pioneer in application of quantitative methods, especially statistical techniques to sediments and sedimentary rocks, and innovator of sediment analyses, was born in BeaverFalls, Pennsylvania, on 28 January 1902 and died of a heartattack in Los Angeles, California, on 18 August 1979.

Billwas a true trailblazer in the study of sediments and sedimen-tary rocks—years ahead of his time—and as a consequence,he perhaps was not recognized fully in his lifetime for hisinnovations by his more conventional colleagues.Bill’s parents, Carl and Hattie, were immigrants fromGermany, who had moved from Pennsylvania to the north-west side of Chicago, an area largely populated by Germans,when Bill and his older brother Henry J. were fairly young.

Carl died soon after that, leaving Hattie to raise the boys.Bill attended Lane Technical High School and by 1920 was working in a hotel while his brotherworked in a drugstore. Because he was a rather private person, little is known about Bill’s parentsand upbringing and less is known about his early childhood and family. Part of Bill’s shyness maybe the result of attitudes and incidents towards persons of German origin during WWI. An earlymarriage ended in failure, and in 1946 he married Marjorie Kamm, who had been a secretary toK.C. Heald, an associate of Bill’s at Gulf Research and Development.His degrees included a Ph.B. in business administration (1926) and election to Phi Beta Kappa, an M.S. in geology (1930), and a Ph.D. (1932) under the tutorage of J. Harlan Bretz, allfrom the University of Chicago. A D.Sc. (honora causa) from Syracuse University was awarded tohim in 1979.

His Master’s thesis was entitled A Key for the Determination of Minerals by Means ofStructure, Form and Texture; his doctoral dissertation was on The Mechanical Analysis of RelatedSamples of Glacial Tills. From this modest beginning, he developed his specialties in the study ofthe physical properties of sediments, application of statistics to sedimentology, the dynamics ofsedimentary processes, and regional sedimentary analysis.

Early geological influences in Bill’s life included Paul MacClintock at Chicago, who stimu-lated his interest in geology. His interest in sedimentary geology was piqued by Francis Pettijohn,a subject he recognized with a potential for the application of statistics. As a graduate student atChicago, Bill shared an office with M. King Hubbert, who reinforced his belief that mathematics,physics, and chemistry were important to geologic studies.

After obtaining his Ph.D., he joined the faculty at the University of Chicago and advancedthrough the academic ranks from instructor to associate professor. During WWII, he worked inbeach-landing intelligence for the Beach Erosion Board of the U.S. Corps of Engineers. After thewar and a short stint with Gulf Research and Development Company (1945–46), Ed Dapples con-vinced him to move to Northwestern University as a full professor in 1946.

He later was named Memorial to William Christian Krumbein1902–1979


William Deering Professor of Geological Sciences at Northwestern and retired in 1970 as Distin-guished Professor Emeritus.
In 1955, he was on leave for research at the National Bureau of Stan-dards in Washington, D.C. He moved to a better climate in California after his retirement, becauseof his emphysema, and taught part-time at UCLA.He was known as a masterful teacher, totally devoted to his students. Larry Sloss describedhim as a teacher who used skill, patience, and humor to impart knowledge to his students (and hisprofessional colleagues). Larry went on to say at Krumbein’s memorial service at Northwesternthat “...rejecting conventional wisdom, he continually pursued innovative methods whereby thenatural phenomena of geology could be expressed with mathematical rigor.

”His first papers in 1932 were on the mechanical analysis of fine-grained sediments and hislast, fittingly enough, was in Syracuse University Geology Contribution 5 in 1978 on Some RecentDevelopments in the Mathematical Geology of Stream-Channel Networks. (He was senior authorposthumously with Wolfgang Scherer and Dan Merriam on a paper, CORSURF: A Covariance-Matrix Trend Analysis Program, published in Computers & Geosciences in 1995.)

In the interven-ing 56 years, he explored sampling, textures, size distribution, diagenesis, transport, properties, andclassification of modern and ancient sediments. He was one of the early workers to extensivelyapply statistical techniques, which included descriptive statistics, Latin square experiments, regres-sion analysis, Markov chains, and probabilistic modeling, to geological problems.

He had an uncanny analytical mind and could cut through all the extraneous material directly to the problem.He consulted for various petroleum companies and much of his research was supported by grantsfrom the Geography Branch of the Office of Naval Research and the Engineering Research Centerof the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.With the introduction of the computer in the mid-1950s, he transferred his statistical analysesfrom the calculator to the computer. In 1958, he published (with L.L. Sloss) the first geologicallyoriented computer program (in SOAP) in a major geological journal.

His last publications were philosophical in nature as he explored the directions and influences of quantification on sedimentology.
He carefully formulated and presented his ideas in his 130+ publications, including five books. In addition to his research papers, he contributed numerous papers to special theme vol-umes. A new approach to introductory geology was given in his book, Down to Earth, coauthoredwith Carey Croneis in 1935 and still was in print 40 years later.

His manual with Francis Pettijohn,Manual of Sedimentary Petrography (1938), was a standard text for several decades, as was hisbook with Larry Sloss on Stratigraphy and Sedimentation, which went through two editions (1951,1963).

An Atlas of Lithofacies Maps, which was a compilation of student work, followed in 1960,authored by E.C. Dapples, Krumbein, and Sloss. However, it was his book in collaboration withFrank Graybill in 1965, An Introduction to Statistical Models, that put him far in the forefront ofquantitative sedimentology (along with the other giant of the time, John C. Griffiths). Krumbeinknew his limitations and always sought help with experts from other fields as needed and this wasthe situation with the statistical modeling book.

As a result, he coauthored several papers withleading statisticians of the day, including John Tukey, Geoff Watson, Frank Graybill, Ron Shreve,and Mike Dacey.He was a Fellow of the Geological Society of America (Councilor 1962–64; Associate Editorof GSA Bulletin, 1963–74), American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Statisti-cal Association; member of the SEPM (Society of Sedimentology) (President, 1950), Society ofExploration Geophysics, American Association of Petroleum Geologists (editor and member of theExecutive Committee 1955–56), American Geophysical Union, and Illinois Academy of Science.He was a member of Sigma Xi and president of the Northwestern Chapter 1962–63. He served onmany other professional and scientific organizations’committees and editorial boards.

Bill Krumbein was a charter member of the International Association for Mathematical Geology (IAMG). At the founding meeting at the 23rd International Geological Congress in Prague, hewas elected the first Past-President of the Association (but served as one of two vice presidents).

The IAMG premier award, the William Christian Krumbein Medal, was named in his honor andinitiated in 1976 to recognize this outstanding geomathematician. When informed by PresidentMerriam of the decision of the Council to create this award, in true modest Krumbein fashion, hereplied “I am deeply moved by this generous action; so much so that I am at a loss for appropriatewords to express my appreciation. The most I seem able to do is to thank you and the Council forhonoring me in this enduring manner.” These two tributes by the IAMG indicate the esteem heldfor him by his numerically-oriented peers.

SEPM honored him in 1977 by awarding him the prestigious Twenhofel Medal, the highesthonor of the Society, for his contributions to the field of sedimentary geology—a well-deservedhonor.

He also received a Guggenheim Fellowship, was a Fulbright Lecturer, and a President’s Fel-low at Northwestern University. In 1945, he was given a commendation for Meritorious CivilianService during WWII. In 1975, his friends, colleagues, and former students honored him with afestschrift, William C. Krumbein, The Making of A Methodologist, in recognition of “...his stimu-lating teaching and guidance...and continuing leadership and research...,” which was published as aMemoir by the Geological Society of America.

Bill was preceded in death by his older brother, Henry. He was survived by his second wife,Marjorie, who died in Santa Monica, California, in 1989. There were no children from either mar-riage.

AcknowledgmentsI would like to thank Edward C. Dapples and E.H. Timothy Whitten, both formerly at North-western University, for providing information in preparing this memorial.

REFERENCES
Howland, A.L., 1975, William C. Krumbein: The making of a methodologist, in Whitten, E.H.T.,ed., Quantitative Studies in the Geological Sciences, a Memoir in Honor of William C.Krumbein: Boulder, Colorado, Geological Society of America Memoir 142, p. xi–xviii.

Whitten, E.H.T., 1979, William C. Krumbein: International Association for Mathematical GeologyNewsletter No. 23, p.

1.SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WILLIAM C. KRUMBEIN
1932 A history of the principles and methods of mechanical analysis: Journal of SedimentaryPetrology, v. 2, no. 2, p. 89–124.

1932 The mechanical analysis of fine-grained sediments: Journal of Sedimentary Petrology, v. 2,no. 3, p. 140–149.

1934 Size frequency distributions of sediments: Journal of Sedimentary Petrology, v. 4, no. 2,p. 65–77.1937 (with Aberdeen, E.J.) The sediments of Barataria Bay (Ba.): Journal of Sedimentary Petrology, v. 7, no. 1, p. 3–17.

1941 Principles of sedimentation and the search for stratigraphic traps: Economic Geology, v. 36,no. 8, p. 786–810.

1942 Criteria for subsurface recognition of unconformities: American Association of PetroleumGeologists Bulletin, v. 26, no. 1, p. 36–62.

1948 Lithofacies maps and regional sedimentary-stratigraphic analysis: American Association ofPetroleum Geologists Bulletin, v. 32, no. 10, p. 1909–1923.

1948 (with Dapples, E.C., and Sloss, L.L.) Tectonic control of lithologic associations: AmericanAssociation of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin, v. 32, no. 10, p. 1924–1947.

1953 (with Miller, R.L.) Design of experiments for statistical analysis of geological data: Journalof Geology, v. 61, no. 6, p. 510–532.

1956 (with Slack, H.A.) Statistical analysis of low-level radioactivity of Pennsylvanian blackfissile shale in Illinois: Geological Society of America Bulletin., v. 67, no. 6, p. 739–762.

1956 Regional and local components in facies maps: American Association of Petroleum Geolo-gists Bulletin, v. 40, no. 9, p. 2163–2194.

1958 (with Sloss, L.L.) High-speed digital computers in stratigraphic and facies analysis: Ameri-can Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin, v. 42, no. 11, p. 2650–2669.

1960 The ‘geological population’as a framework for analysing numerical data in geology:Liverpool, Manchester Geological Journal, v. 2, pt. 3, p. 341–368.

1962 Open and closed number systems in stratigraphic mapping: American Association ofPetroleum Geologists Bulletin, v. 46, no. 12, p. 2229–2245.

1968 Statistical models in sedimentology: Sedimentology, v. 10, no. 1, p. 7–23.

1969 (with James, W.R.) Frequency distributions of stream link lengths: Journal of Geology, v. 77,no. 5, p. 544–565.

1969 (with Dacey, M.F.) Markov chains and embedded Markov chains in geology: Journal ofMathematical Geology, v. 1, no.1, p. 79–96.

1974 The pattern of quantification in geology, in Merriam, D.F., ed., The Impact of Quantificationon Geology: Syracuse University Geology Contributions 2, p. 51–66.

1975 Probablistic modeling in geology, in Merriam, D.F., ed., Random Processes in Geology:New York, Springer-Verlag, p. 39–54.

1978 Some recent developments in the mathematical geology of stream-channel networks, inMerriam, D.F., Geomathematics: Past, Present, and Prospects: Syracuse University GeologyContributions 5, p. 37–56.