William Thomas Pecora | |
|---|---|
 | |
| 8th Director of the U.S. Geological Survey | |
| In office 1965 (1965) – 1971 (1971) | |
| Preceded by | Thomas Brennan Nolan |
| Succeeded by | Vincent Ellis McKelvey |
| Under Secretary of the Interior | |
| In office 1971 (1971) – 1972 (1972) | |
| Preceded by | Fred J. Russell |
| Succeeded by | John C. Whitaker |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1913-02-01)February 1, 1913 |
| Died | July 19, 1972(1972-07-19) (aged 59) Washington, D.C., U.S. |
| Scientific career | |
| Alma mater |
|
| Fields | |
| Institutions | U.S. Geological Survey |
| Thesis | Petrology and Mineralogy of the Western Bearpaw Mountains, Montana (1940) |
| [1] | |
William Thomas Pecora II (February 1, 1913 – July 19, 1972) was an Americangeologist who served as the eighthdirector of the U.S. Geological Survey and later asUnder Secretary of the Interior. Pecora had a successful career in both scientific and athletic spheres—he completed infencing at the1936 Summer Olympics, and during his lifetime was elected to both theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences and theNational Academy of Sciences. He was an early figure in what is now theLandsat program, and theWilliam T. Pecora Award forremote sensing is named after him.
William Thomas Pecora II[a] was born on February 1, 1913, inBelleville, New Jersey, son of Cono and Anna Pecora (née Amabile). Both parents were immigrants fromSant'Arsenio, in southernItaly. Pecora was the ninth of 10 children, four boys and six girls. In 1929, the year he graduatedBarringer High School, he was awarded a Charles Halsey Scholarship providing $1,000 annually towards education atPrinceton University, where he majored ingeology; he was awarded aBachelor of Science in Engineering degree in 1933.[2] After graduation, he stayed at Princeton for two years as a geology tutor.[3] In 1933, while a student at Princeton,[4] he won the intercollegiatefencing competition.[5] He was a member of theAmerican team to the1936 Summer Olympics inBerlin, where he competed in theindividual andteam foil.[6]
In the summer of 1934, Pecora was a field assistant toErling Dorf, studyingstratigraphy inMontana and at theBeartooth Butte Formation. Pecora started graduate studies atHarvard University in 1935, concentrating onoptical mineralogy andpetrography under the professorEsper S. Larsen, Jr. Larsen encouraged Pecora to look for a thesis study area in the vicinity of theBearpaw Mountains; Pecora received a grant form the Holden Fund to finance fieldwork in 1937 and 1939 on the mountains' western fringe. His doctoral thesis was apetrologic study of the Boxelderlaccolith.[3] His formal work had been completed when he joined theU.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in 1939,[4] and he received hisPh.D. from Harvard in 1940.[7]
After joining the USGS in 1939,[8]: 41 his first assignment was in 1940—D. Foster Hewett, head of the metals section at the USGS, frequently visited Harvard until the outbreak ofWorld War II. Hewett established the Strategic Minerals Program, and recruited Pecora, who was assigned to studynickeliferous deposits in the western United States and inBrazil, among other locations in North and South America. In total, Pecora and his colleagues described nine new minerals, includingwhewellite. The significance of this work was described in a memorial to Pecora by Charles A. Anderson:[3]
Bill found that the richer deposits of nickel were the result of long weathering ofpyroxenite orperidotite during a complex physiographic history and thatserpentinite was not a favorable rock for the residual accumulation of nickel.Garnierite in the nickel-silicate deposit nearRiddle, Oregon, had three modes of occurrence, reflecting an orderly variation in color, specific gravity, and nickel content, which serve as useful guides foreconomic geologists.
Pecora married Ethelwyn Elizabeth Carter ofFranklin County, Kentucky, on April 7, 1947. They had two children, William Carter Pecora, born in 1949, and Ann Stewart Pecora, born in 1953.[3]
In 1949, he started a large-scale geologic mapping program of eight fifteen-minutequadrangles in the Bearpaw Mountains. There were eight maps published between 1960 and 1963. In 1956, Pecora had published a review paper oncarbonatites, describing their formation. In a 1962 paper, he concentrated on the carbonatite deposits in the Bearpaw Mountains.[3]
In 1957, Pecora was selected as Chief of the Branch of Geochemistry and Petrology. He established programs ingeochronology, experimentalpetrology, andmineralogy. In 1961, he returned to research in his former capacity. He was named Chief Geologist in 1964 and a year later was appointedDirector of the Geological Survey by U.S. presidentLyndon B. Johnson. As director, he pressed for programs that would be responsive to emerging national problems, such as investigations ofgold resources and off-shore oil and gas exploration. He established the National Center of Earthquake Research in response to problems revealed by the1964 Alaska earthquake. He also advocated for the creation of aremote sensing satellite that would be used to gather information about the surface of the Earth, which became theLandsat program, the longest-running project for gathering images of Earth from space.[9] Pecora was USGS director when theAstrogeology Research Program began in 1963.[10]
Pecora also addressed the discovery of large reserves of oil and gas on the north coast ofAlaska in 1968. Under his direction, the Geological Survey made a careful study of the geologic aspects of the proposed pipeline route. From 1947 to 1967 he was a member of theUnited States Civil Service Commission's Board of Examiners for Geology, concerned with the development and maintenance of standards in the selection of geologists for federal employment. He was an active member of the Survey's Pick and Hammer shows, which were presented annually to make fun of top survey managers. In 1970, Pecora expressed his opposition to burying theTrans-Alaska Pipeline System, as it would be unsafe to place an underground pipeline in Arctic land He was appointed to serve as Under Secretary of the Interior in theDepartment of the Interior by presidentRichard Nixon on April 1, 1971.[11]
He died at age 59 on July 19, 1972, atGeorge Washington University Hospital after having surgery fordiverticulitis the previous month. A statement from president Nixon called him "a remarkable civil servant and an internationally respected figure in the scientific community".[11]
The mineralpecoraite was named for him, as was thePecora Escarpment in Antarctica.[11]
The William T. Pecora Award was established in 1974 to honor Pecora, and is sponsored jointly by theDepartment of the Interior and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). It is presented annually to individuals or groups that make outstanding contributions toward understanding the Earth by means ofremote sensing.[12]
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| Preceded by | Director of theUnited States Geological Survey 1965–1971 | Succeeded by |
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