Dr. William Andrew Thomas of Tuscaloosa | 1936 - 2022 | Obituary
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Memorial Service
Friday, Oct 7, 2022
2:00 PM
Dr. William Andrew Thomas
July 23, 1936 - October 1, 2022
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Dr. William Andrew Thomas, age 86, of Tuscaloosa, passed away on October 1, 2022 at his residence. A Celebration of Life Memorial Service will be held on Friday, October 7, 2022 at 2:00PM at Tuscaloosa Memorial Chapel, with Bro. Kenneth Wyatt officiating. A visitation will be held one hour preceding the service.
Dr. Thomas is survived by his wife of 65 years Rachel Leach Thomas; daughters: Carolyn Thomas Mars (Lyle) and Amy Thomas Orr (Robert); grandchildren: Davis Orr (Madeline), James Orr (Monica), Christopher Orr (Grace), John Orr (Emilee) and William Mars.
He was born July 23, 1936, at Berea, Kentucky, the oldest son of Davis Norman Thomas and Delphia Bennett Thomas. He grew up and completed high school in McKee, Kentucky. In the beginning, William Andrew was called Tom by family and close friends, and later in life, his friends and colleagues called him Bill. He received B.S. (1956) and M.S. (1957) degrees in geology from the University of Kentucky, where he lettered in varsity track and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. While a student at UK, he met Rachel Leach, a student at Berea College. Tom and Rachel were married August 24, 1957, and went off together to Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg, Virginia. Rachel completed B.S. (1958) and M.S. (1959) degrees in child development, while Tom completed his Ph.D. degree in geology later in 1959.
In 1959, they moved to Jackson, Mississippi, where Bill was employed as a petroleum geologist with The California Company (later Chevron). They moved back and forth between Jackson and New Orleans, Louisiana, while Bill worked on wells in the Gulf Coast, both on-shore and off-shore. During their two stays in Jackson, Mississippi, their two daughters, Carolyn and Amy, were born.
In 1963, a change of career took them into academic life at Birmingham-Southern College. Over the next 47 years, Dr. Thomas held faculty positions at Birmingham-Southern College, Queens College of City University of New York, Georgia State University, the University of Alabama, and the University of Kentucky. He retired as the James S. Hudnall Professor of Geology at the University of Kentucky in June, 2010. Although he achieved tenure at all five institutions and was department chair at four of them, his greatest satisfaction was in working with students in their research. In all, 16 Ph.D. students and 26 M.S. students completed their degrees under his direction.
Throughout his academic career, Dr. Thomas maintained an active research program, publishing more than 150 journal articles and making more than 200 presentations at professional meetings. He was invited to present seminars at more than 60 institutions and organizations. He made presentations in 37 different U.S. states and 15 other countries from Norway to Argentina, Uruguay, New Zealand, China, and Switzerland.
His research was varied and evolved over the years. The main topics included the geology of mountain belts, especially the Appalachians and Ouachitas; the plate-tectonic history of the continental margins of North America and its predecessors, including his most-cited paper on promontories and embayments at transform offsets of the eastern rifted margin; the rifting of the Argentine Precordillera from southern North America (technically Laurentia) and the later accretion to Gondwana (now South America); the use of detrital zircons to determine the dispersal of sediment across parts of the continent; and the geologic causes of concentrations of earthquakes within the North American continent.
Dr. Thomas was active in professional organizations, especially the Geological Society of America (GSA). He served as Editor of the GSA Bulletin, one of the most important geological journals in the world; and he was a Councilor and later President (2004-2006) of GSA. He also served on the Board and as Treasurer of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents, as Treasurer of the American Geological Institute, and as a Member of the Management Board of the Association of Earth Science Editors. He was a long-time member of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists and of the Society for Sedimentary Geology. He was proud to be a Charter Member of the Alabama Geological Society.
After his retirement from the University of Kentucky, Bill and Rachel made one last move, to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where he has been a Visiting Scientist at the Geological Survey of Alabama since 2010. The place at the Survey has provided an opportunity to pursue his life-long research in the geology of the Appalachian Mountains in Alabama, as well as more regionally. He enjoyed the opportunity to do research without other responsibilities, and wrote some of his most notable publications during these recent years. The location in Tuscaloosa, on the campus of the University of Alabama, had the additional benefit that four of Tom’s and Rachel’s grandsons (Davis, James, Christopher, and John, sons of Amy and Robert Orr, who live in Birmingham) were students at UA and have dropped by grandpaw’s office from time to time. We enjoyed many meals together. Daughter Carolyn and her husband Dr. John (Lyle) Mars live in Fairhope, AL; their son, William, graduated from Christopher Newport University in Virginia and he is employed in Washington D.C. area, visits his grandparents in Tuscaloosa frequently. Seeing his grandsons as university students has provided many new perspectives for an old professor, although both of his daughters took a class he taught at the University of Alabama.
The family requests that memorial contributions be made to the William and Rachel Thomas Graduate Fellowship in Geology Fund at: https://uky.networkforgood.com/causes/18131-william-a-and-rachel-l-thomas-graduate-fellowship-in-geology-fund?cause_id=18131