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CONNECTICUT: IN MEMORIAM: KARL TUREKIAN

US Official News
March 21, 2013 Thursday

Hartford

Yale University, The State of Connecticut has issued the following
press release:

Karl K. Turekian, a pioneering Yale geochemist who examined an
uncommonly broad range of topics in planetary science - including the
sediments of the deep seas, the hot springs of Yellowstone National
Park, meteorite strikes, and the composition of moon rocks - died
March 15 in Branford. He was 85. The cause was cancer.

Turekian joined the Yale faculty in 1956 as its first geochemist. Over
the next five decades, his trademark became the inventive use of trace
elements, natural radioactive elements, and radiogenic isotopes for
understanding processes of the Earth, its atmosphere, and oceans.

He shed light on acid rain, cosmic dust flux, sediment accumulation,
the global transport of metals through the atmosphere, the circulation
of Long Island Sound, the composition of the continental crust, and
the origin of the solar system, among other phenomena. His research
bolstered the idea that a giant meteorite strike led to the extinction
of the dinosaurs, and he advanced new methods for testing models of
atmospheric circulation and identifying art forgeries.

"Karl Turekian was at the forefront of expanding the scope of questions
that could be addressed by geochemistry and developing new techniques
to answer them," said Bill Graustein, who studied under Turekian
and remained a close friend. "He consistently used his encyclopedic
knowledge of the study of the Earth to take techniques developed in
one area and apply them to unsolved problems in other areas."

Along the way, Turekian mentored generations of scientists, both in
the laboratory and in free-flowing coffee hour chats that "launched
countless scientific careers and indeed set the course of geochemistry
that carries forward today," said Jay Ague, the current chair of
Yale's Department of Geology & Geophysics.

Turekian fondly recalled dozens of former students and fellow
researchers by name in a 2005 autobiographical piece published in
the Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Science. "My undergraduate
and graduate students brought excitement to my life at Yale then and
this has continued to the present day," he wrote.

Born Oct. 25, 1927, Karl Karekin Turekian was raised in New Jersey and
the Bronx, the son of Armenian immigrants and genocide survivors. He
served in the U.S. Navy, received his bachelor's degree from Wheaton
College in 1949, and then, in 1955, earned one of the first doctorates
in geochemistry awarded by Columbia University. He joined the Yale
faculty the next year and married his wife, Roxanne, in 1962.

Over a long career, Turekian - who at the time of his death was
Sterling Professor of Geology & Geophysics Emeritus, Yale's highest
faculty rank - wrote hundreds of journal articles and five books,
including "Oceans," "Man and the Ocean" (with Yale geologist B.J.

Skinner), "Chemistry of the Earth," "Oceanography" (with C. Drake, J.

Imbrie and J. Knauss), and "Global Environmental Change."

Turekian served in editorial positions of eight scholarly journals
and in a wide variety of administrative roles at Yale. He was chair
of the Department of Geology & Geophysics for most of the 1980s;
curator-in-charge of meteorites and planetary science at the Peabody
Museum of Natural History; director of the Center for the Study of
Global Change; and director of the Yale Institute for Biospheric
Studies.

A member of Yale's Elizabethan Club, Turekian also was an executive
fellow at Yale's Berkeley College.

He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow
of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, among other learned
societies, and received many honors during his career. These included
the Goldschmidt Medal of the Geochemical Society, the Maurice Ewing
Medal of the American Geophysical Union and the Wollaston Medal of
The Geological Society of London, and, from the Yale College Phi
Beta Kappa chapter, the William Clyde DeVane Medal for distinguished
teaching and scholarship.

Turekian is survived by his wife, Roxanne; two children, Karla Ann
Turekian and Vaughan Charles Turekian; a daughter-in-law, Heather
Leigh Turekian; two grandchildren, Aleena Marie Turekian and Charles
("Chip") Henry Turekian; and many cousins, nieces, and nephews. A
private graveside service will be held at Grove Street Cemetery in
New Haven. A celebration of his life will take place at a later date.

"The world has lost one of the greatest geoscientists who ever lived,"
said Ague. "His influence is so large it is impossible to measure."