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Guide to the Allan Cox Papers
SC0343
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Call Number: SC0343
Creator:
Cox, Allan, 1926-1987.
Title: Allan Cox papers
Dates: 1954-1987
Physical Description:
20 Linear feet
Summary: Papers document his professional life as teacher, administrator,
and researcher and include correspondence; memoranda; research notes, charts, proposals,
and reports; grant applications; outlines, tests, lecture notes, and other teaching
materials; manuscripts; minutes; date books; papers and theses by his students;
reprints; maps; and his notes while a student at UC Berkeley. Cox studied paleomagnetism
and plate tectonics theory; some materials pertain to research done on the Galapagos
Islands and in China.
Language(s): The materials are in English.
Repository:
Department of Special Collections and University Archives
Stanford University Libraries
557 Escondido Mall
Stanford, CA 94305-6064
Email: speccollref@stanford.edu
Phone: (650) 725-1022
URL: http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/spc/spc.html
This collection is open for research.
All requests to reproduce, publish, quote from, or otherwise use collection materials
must be submitted in writing to the Head of Special Collections and University
Archives, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, California 94304-6064. Consent is
given on behalf of Special Collections as the owner of the physical items and is not
intended to include or imply permission from the copyright owner. Such permission
must be obtained from the copyright owner, heir(s) or assigns. See:
http://library.stanford.edu/depts/spc/pubserv/permissions.html.
Restrictions also apply to digital representations of the original materials. Use of
digital files is restricted to research and educational purposes.
. Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University
Libraries, Stanford, Calif.
Biographical/Historical Sketch
The son of a house painter, Allan attended high school in Santa Ana. He pursued his
education through independent reading during 3 years in the merchant marine (1945-48), 3
years of undergraduate chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley (1948-51),
and 2 more years of independent reading as a private in the U.S. Army (1951-53). The
most important event in his education, and the one that helped him choose geology as a
career, was a summer job with the U.S. Geological Survey in 1950 as a field assistant to
Clyde Wahrhaftig in Alaska. Allan received his B.A. (1955), M.A. (1957), and Ph.D.
(1959) degrees from the University of California at Berkeley, where he was inspired by
the teaching of John Verhoogen and Perry Byerly. He began his professional career at the
U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, where he helped establish what was to become one
of the most successful paleomagnetic laboratories in the country. From 1959 to 1967 he
worked as a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey. In 1967 he joined the faculty
at Stanford University, where he became Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Geophysics. He
was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1969 and to the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences in 1974. He became president of the American Geophysical Union in
1978. He received the Fleming Medal of the American Geophysical Union (1969), the Day
Medal of the Geological Society of America (1975), and the Vetlesen Prize (1971). In
1979 he became the dean of the School of Earth Sciences. He was an author of over 100
papers in learned scientific journals. He established our Master's degree program in
exploration geophysics, and was mentor to many students.
The essence of Allan Cox is a rare quality -- the ability and determination to bring out
the very best in others. To a degree we've never seen in another person with his
achievements, he had a most wonderful mix of personal humility with demanding standards,
so that before a colleague knew what was happening, he or she was challenged into
performing at a level not previously thought possible. And once that level was
established those demands were never relaxed. The atmosphere was exhilarating.
His best-known research joined the paleomagnetism and radiometric ages of rocks
collected from different parts of the world to find that before 700,000 years ago the
geometric field had pointed south instead of north. Since the reversals were found to
occur simultaneously everywhere, the polarity of the entire planetary field must have
reversed. Together with his colleagues, by 1966 he had established a radiometric
polarity time scale for the past 4,500,000 years and had concluded that polarity changes
had occurred at an average rate of 5 reversals per million years. They found that the
time intervals between successive reversals were highly variable in length, the shortest
being less that than 50,000 years and the longest greater than 1,000,000 years.
He died January 27, 1987, in a bicycle accident near his home in Skylonda.
Papers document his professional life as teacher, administrator, and researcher and
include correspondence; memoranda; research notes, charts, proposals, and reports; grant
applications; outlines, tests, lecture notes, and other teaching materials; manuscripts;
minutes; date books; papers and theses by his students; reprints; maps; and his notes
while a student at UC Berkeley. Cox studied paleomagnetism and plate tectonics theory;
some materials pertain to research done on the Galapagos Islands and in China.
Cox, Allan, 1926-1987.
Stanford University. Dept. of Geophysics
--Faculty.
Stanford University. School of Earth
Sciences
China--Geophysics.
Galapagos Islands--Geophysics.
Geophysics.
Paleomagnetism.
Plate tectonics
| AAAS | American Association for the Advancement of Science |
| ACS | American Chemical Society |
| AGU | American Geophysical Union |
| CGU | Canadian Geophysical Union |
| ERDA | Energy Research and Development Administration |
| G | Geophysics (course number) |
| GEO | Geology (course number) |
| GP | Geophysics (course number) |
| GSA | Geological Society of America |
| JGG | Journal of Geomagnetism and Geoelectricity |
| JGR | Journal of Geophysical Research |
| MAG | Magnometer |
| NAS | National Academy of Sciences |
| NOAA | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration |
| NRC | National Research Council |
| NSF | National Science Foundation |
| OPLAR | Oceanic Plateaus Research |
| PEPS | Paleomagnetic Euler Poles |
| PRF | Petroleum Research Fund |