2014 JOSEPH A. CUSHMAN AWARD TO STEPHEN J. CULVER

Abstract

Stephen J. Culver is the 2014 recipient of the prestigious Joseph A. Cushman Award for Outstanding Achievement in Foraminiferal Research. Stephen is the quintessential foraminiferalogist. His contributions range temporally from Early Cambrian to Recent, environmentally from the intertidal to the abyss and geographically from the Atlantic Coastal Plain of the United States to Malaysia. His contributions (over 150 publications) range from detailed studies on very specific topics to broad insightful reviews to the geology of entire countries (Sierra Le-one). Steve has accumulated knowledge first hand from extensive field work ranging from the Outer Banks of North Carolina to Africa, as well as in the deep-diving submersible, Alvin . The prerequisites for becoming a successful geologist/paleontologist appeared early on when he was a boy. He loved collecting and learning about fossils and was fascinated by maps. After earning his Ph.D. in 1976 at the age of 24 from the University of Wales at Swansea, U.K., he taught for two years at the University of Sierra Leone. As a post-doctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Institution from 1978–81, Stephen undertook and completed one of the most ambitious foraminiferal projects ever attempted. Using all the data (691 papers from 1839–1979) ever published, catalogs on the distribution of Recent foraminifera on the continental margins of North America were compiled on a primitive mainframe computer. The data were transmitted from the Cushman Collection, Todd Library, and card catalogs over a phone line using a teletype machine. At one point, after months of data entry, the entire file went missing. After a few hours of utter anguish, Culver was relieved to find out that the file had …