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Journal of Paleontology 91(6):1318–1321
University); Devonian brachiopod specialist William F. Koch (Oregon); paleontologist Don Mikulic (Illinois Geological Sur- vey); brachiopod/gastropod and tectonic specialist, Robert Blodgett (Alaska); entrepreneur Ning Zhang (Oregon); and geologist Al Potter (Texas). Art also mentored evolutionary paleobiologist Peter Sheehan (Milwaukee Public Museum) in his early work on brachiopods. One of Art’s postdocs was David Perry, who was fast becoming a noted Devonian brachiopod specialist until his untimely death in a helicopter crash in the Canadian Rockies. Art also corresponded with the first author of this memoriam while she was a graduate student and, during a difficult time in her life, provided a postdoc for her to continue her paleoecological studies at OSU. Art’s motto was that all publications were “progress reports” and to keep going, no matter what occurs in your life. He was also known for his generosity in hosting scientists
who wished to visit his lab and he kept up a voluminous cor- respondence with paleobiologists from all over the world. He also had an infamous hydrochloric acid leaching facility—likely the largest in the world—where he and his colleagues dissolved tons of limestone to extract thousands upon thousands of silicified brachiopods, gastropods, corals, and other Paleozoic invertebrates. Art’sinfluential international work received many honors.
Figure 4. Art and his collaborator, Jane Gray, at the Geological Society of America meeting, Riverside, California, 1971.
paleoinvertebrate expert, John Talent, on global Devonian bio- geography and biostratigraphy. Art collaborated extensively with Jess Johnson, a brilliant Devonian specialist on brachio- pods and conodonts, who was working on his Ph.D. at UCLA when he contracted polio in 1959 and thereafter was tied to a respirator. Art convinced Jess to move to Caltech as his research assistant in 1962, enabling Jess to finish his Ph.D., and from then on, produce an extensive publication record that revolu- tionized middle Paleozoic stratigraphy of western North America. From Caltech, Jess moved to OSU with Art, where he became a Professor of Geology. At OSU, Art also had an extensive collaboration on the stasis of fossil behavior with life-in-amber specialist, George Poinar, Jr. Art’s last published tome focused on Phanerozoic paleoclimate in collaboration with Chen Yu (Nanjing Institute) and Christopher Scotese (University of Texas). For that book, they published a compendium of 28 maps that detailed the paleogeographic distributions of the continents and their paleoclimates based on lithology, minerals and fossils. Fortunately for us, his books detail his encyclopedic and synthetic knowledge of the fossil record, providing a springboard for future research projects. Art mentored many students, from undergraduates to
postdocs. His eight doctoral students included biostratigrapher and biofacies expert Charles Harper, Jr.; sequence stratigrapher and Upper Paleozoic fossil specialist, Peter Isaacson (University of Idaho); Paleozoic gastropod expert, David Rohr (Sul Ross
He received a Guggenheim Fellowship to examine the Silurian– Devonian rocks of Western Europe and several distinguished honors from the National Academy of Sciences, including Exchange Fellow to the Soviet Union, Senior Scholar to China, and Distinguished Scholar to China. Additionally he garnered the Congressional Antarctic Medal, SEPM’s Raymond C. Moore Medal, National Science Award–First Class–Academia Sinica, Paleontological Society Medal, and the Gilbert Harris Award of the Paleontological Research Institute, among other distinguished honors. The Advisory Committee for Antarctic Names honored Art with a plateau in the Geologists Range—the Boucot Plateau—for his stratigraphic work in Antarctica (1964–1965). Art’s service to paleontology and geology was legion, and
only a few salient contributions are discussed here. He served from 1972 to his death as the U.S. member for the International Geological Congress (IGU) subcommittee on the Silurian System and as a U.S. member for the IGU subcommittee on the Ordovician-Silurian Boundary (1974–1987). He was Chairman for Project Ecostratigraphy (IGU, 1974–1976), a member of the National Research Council Panel concerning pre-Pleistocene Climates (1980–1982), and an advisory committee member for NSF’s Earth’s Sciences (1982–1985). He was President for both the Paleontological Society (1980–1981) and the International Palaeontological Association (1984–1989), and Vice-President for the International Commission on Stratigraphy (1986–1989). Art could not have done his work without his beloved wife,
Barbara “Bobbie” Boucot. Bobbie was a brilliant student at Radcliffe and was tasked with teaching Art the French language so that he could pass his Ph.D. comps. Well, one thing led to another, and Bobbie and Art were married in Cambridge, Mas- sachusetts (1948). Soon after, they had four wonderful Boucot children: Hanna, Katharine, Samuel Gordon (named after the mineralogist), and Peter. Bobbie kept Art’s life in order, from helping with field work, boxing up fossils that took several
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