Hollis Dow Hedberg

Hollis Dow Hedberg was an American geologist who specialised in petroleum exploration. Born in Falun, Kansas, in 1903, he studied at the University of Kansas, Cornell and Stanford. He began in 1926 as a petrographer with Lago Petroleum in Maracaibo, then joined the geological laboratory of Gulf Oil in Venezuela, where he became head of the laboratory, and he rose to chief geologist for worldwide operations in 1952 and vice president for exploration in 1957. His work on stratigraphic classification and procedure won universal acceptance. He identified the La Luna Formation as a major petroleum source rock in northwestern Venezuela, chaired the Project Mohole committee in 1962 and 1963, and taught at Princeton from 1959 until 1971. He received the Mary Clark Thompson Medal in 1973 and the Wollaston Medal in 1975.