Dr. Mort Turner Oct. 24, 1920 - May 1, 2004

Mortimer D. "Mort" Turner died of natural causes Saturday, May 1, 2004, in Boulder Colorado. He was 83.

A celebration of Dr. Turner's life was held at 4:30 p.m. Thursday May 6th at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR).

The son of Clarence E. Turner and Satia Darling Turner, he was born Oct. 24, 1920, in Greeley. He married Laura Perez Mendez on Jan. 20, 1945, in Aberdeen, Md. She died in April 1965. He married JoAnne Church on Dec. 5, 1965, in Kensington, Md.

Dr. Turner studied at the University of California-Berkeley and earned a bachelor's degree in geological engineering while in the Army. He was assigned to Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland and worked on missiles under Edwin Hubble. He served in the Army from 1943 until 1945.

Dr. Turner worked for the California Bureau of Mines and Geology from 1948 to 1954. While there he received a master's degree in geology from UC-Berkeley. He then set up the first State Geological Survey of Puerto Rico. In 1959 he was recruited by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in Washington, D.C., to help manage the U.S. Antarctica Research Program, making 27 trips to the Antarctic and traveling also to Europe, Japan, India, Nepal, Chile, and China. He received a doctorate from the University of Kansas in 1972. As NSF program officer for Polar Earth Sciences, Dr. Turner mentored, funded, and led field programs that made new discoveries in paleontology, geology, and geophysics on the Antarctic continent.

"He began this leadership in 1959, at a time when Antarctic research was just emerging from a period of geographic exploration to its present status of multi-disciplinary and multi-national scientific achievement of importance to understanding global climate change, earth structure, and the evolution of life." said Mark F. Meier, former director of the University of Colorado's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) in Boulder.

"He was the one who grew the Antarctic earth sciences program following the International Geophysical Year 1957-59." according to Guy Guthridge, Manager of Antarctic Information in the NSF's Office of Polar Programs. "Mort was gracious, generous, dignified, and knowledgeable, and he seemed mostly unfazed by the short-fuse panics that occasionally dominated our work."

Wesley E. LeMasurier, retired professor of geology at the University of Colorado at Denver says of Turner's accomplishments, "His tenure saw the initiation of major ice drilling, sediment drilling, and meteorite collecting programs which continue to this day in much expanded and diversified forms. With his support, the Antarctic ice sheet was first penetrated to its base in 1968, and sediments in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica were penetrated in the early 1970s. Numerous subsequent drilling programs of this kind form the data base upon which much of our knowledge of climate change is based."

In 1984 he retired from NSF to do research in geology and early man in Colorado, Montana, and China. In 1987 he moved to Boulder to join the University of Colorado's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) as a Fellow Emeritus where he continued his research jointly with his wife. He also taught geology courses at CU-Denver.

Dr. Turner received a number of honors, including the American Polar Society's Career Service Award. Turner Hills in Antarctica, the mineral Turnerite, a fossil plesiosaur and a prehistoric fossil sea mammal are all named after him.

"He was a loving husband and partner, and a wonderful father and grandfather. We will all miss him very much," his family said. Survivors include his wife JoAnne Turner of Boulder; two daughters, Satia Goff of Monticello, Minn., and Ylla Romdall of Bellingham, Wash.; a son, Robert Turner of Bakersfield, Calif.; a stepson, Christopher Dort of Spotsylvania, Va.; six grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by a brother, Robert Turner.

A celebration of Dr. Turner's life was held at 4:30 p.m. Thursday May 6th at CU Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, Room 269, 1560 30th St., Boulder. His body was donated to the University Medical Center in Denver for research.

Contributions may be made to a scholarship in Dr. Turner's name to the CU Foundation, P.O. Box 1140, Boulder, CO 80306.

A wonderful article entitled "Remembering Mort Turner 1920 - 2004" was written by Jo Ann Harris, Anne Stanaway, Tina (Ylla) Romdall, Robson Bonnichsen and Mary Beatty and published in the The Mammoth Trumpet Newsletter, Vol 19., No. 4, September 2004. The article includes an overview of his career and a series of memories of him by colleagues and family members. The newsletter is available from the Center for the Study of the First Americans, Department of Anthropology, at Texas A & M University http://csfa.tamu.edu/mammoth/issues/vol19/4_contents.htm