Richard T. Buffler

The UT Jackson School of Geophysics, commemorating his life-long devotion to the study and teaching of geology, hosted a retirement celebration for Dick Buffler on Friday, November 1, at the UT Alumni Center.

A UT Austin alumnus, Dick Buffler received his B.S. in Geology from the Department of Geological Sciences in 1959. He completed his Ph.D. in Geology at the University of California in Berkeley in 1967. Dick worked with Shell Oil for 4 1/2 years, then the University of Alaska in Anchorage for 3 years before returning to The University of Texas in 1975. He was based initially in Galveston with the Institute for Geophysics. He later accepted a position as a graduate faculty member and moved to Austin in 1983. His responsibilities included teaching graduate courses in seismic (sequence) stratigraphy and advising graduate students. Dick served on or is currently serving on 73 student thesis/dissertation committees, 35 of which he served as (co-)supervisor. Many of his students are active members of the academic community or involved in the oil industry.

As a scientist, Dick participated in 18 scientific cruises, serving as (co-)chief for nine of the cruises. Dick's main research focus during the past 27 years has been the geologic history of the Gulf of Mexico basin. His recent field activities have led him to study the Chicxulub impact crater along the northern shore of the Yucatan Peninsula, rift basins in Arizona and New Mexico, and rift sedimentation, volcanism, tectonics and archaeology along the southern Red Sea - northern Danakil of Eritrea, Africa. His most recent activity was two weeks field work in eastern Java in August 2002 as part of an archeological project being led by Frank Huffman of the UT Anthropology Dept. The main objective of the project is to reconstruct the depositional setting and paleoenvironment at the site where an early Homo erectus skull (1.8 m.y.) was found in 1936. Dick is co-principal investigator of the Gulf Basin Depositional Synthesis project at UTIG. Dick's current research interests include seismic/sequence stratigraphy, depositional environments and depositional systems, marine geology and geophysics of continental margins and ocean basins, regional tectonics, and rift basin sedimentation and tectonics. He has authored or coauthored over 120 publications.

Dick's dedication to teaching and service were recognized early in his life, as Dick was a member of several honor societies as an undergraduate at UT Austin, including the Honorary Freshman Society Phi Eta Sigma, the Honorary Earth Science Fraternity Sigma Gamma Epsilon, Phi Beta Kappa honor society, and the Texas Cowboys honorary service organization. At graduate school (UC Berkeley), Dick was awarded an NSF Graduate Fellowship and a GSA Penrose Grant. In 1979-1980, he served as an AAPG Distinguished Lecturer. Charles Winker and Dick received the Wallace E. Pratt Memorial Award for best paper published in the AAPG Bulletin in 1988 ("Paleogeographic evolution of early deep-water Gulf of Mexico and margins, Jurassic to Middle Cretaceous (Comanchean)"). In 2001, the Gulf Coast Section Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists presented Dick with an Honorary Membership Award for his distinquished contributions to the geology of the Gulf of Mexico basin.

Needless to say, we are very proud to have Dick as a Senior Research Scientist at UTIG and as a Professor in the UT Department of Geological Sciences.