In awarding Honorary Membership to Carl H. Savit, the 1979 recipient of the Virgil Kauffman Gold Medal award, the Honors and Awards Committee would appear to be establishing a tradition. Carl, however, is one of those rare individuals whose day-to-day achievements year in and year out advance the state of the art and bring credit to our profession.
     Carl's lucid and interesting presentations have made him known to virtually all geophysicists. He has been such a visible and able spokesman for the profession and the industry so often that we may not place his technical accomplishments in a proper perspective. Indeed, he has served as assistant for earth, sea and air sciences to the President's Science Advisor, but he is also a scientist who has authored 28 issued U. S. patents with corresponding patents in other countries. One of these patents describes the SEG standard "A" Format, a format so familiar that few recollect how it evolved. So it is with much of Carl's work it has become too familiar and we forget its origins...
     Starting at the California Institute of Technology with a B.S. degree in 1942 his career progressed with purpose and direction. While a graduate student, he worked briefly with the Air Force in meteorology and as an Air Force official on upper atmospheric physics. In 1948 he joined Western Geophysical Co. of America. From chief mathematician he advanced to senior vice-president, technology, the post he holds today.
     We became most interested in his accomplishments after he joined Western because they relate to exploration geophysics. Here Carl demonstrated an intuition which caused him to focus on technology which would always stand him in advance of the industry. For example, during the early 1950s he recognized a need to determine interval velocities from seismic data in a routine way. He developed such a method which featured the ability to accommodate variable survey configurations. A specially prepared slide rule also treated computations for curved ray paths.
     Later in 1950, he developed the first method of joint use of reflection and refraction information including a way to determine the normal depth to a refractor from unreversed profiles. Work of this type has only quite recently become an area for research and development. Four or five of his patents during this period dealt with the first, and for many years the only practical method of accurately handling 24-fold CDP data from analog tapes.
     Toward the end of the 1950s Carl was concerned with the role of seismic amplitudes and "Bright Spots" while most of the rest of us were seeking to obliterate such information in the name of reflector continuity. His papers in Geophysics and the Oil and Gas Journal document his foresight which again has now become second nature to us all. In 1960 he was named a Classic Author of Geophysics.
     During the 1960s Carl's projects included the first use of multitrace reflection and refraction shooting (including CDP work) in the deep ocean, and participation in the design and development of the first array processor by IBM. Most recently we see his attention turned toward systems having large numbers of channels and color displays. If the past and Carl's insights in particular are any guide to the future, we can confidently predict the roles that these will soon play. Litton Industries this year awarded him their Advanced Technology Achievement Award for precisely these reasons and in recognition of his scientific acumen.
     All of this work has been done against a background of voluntary service both to the profession and the industry. Carl has served as President of SEG, Editor of Geophysics, and General Chairman for an SEG Annual International Meeting. He has been president of the International Association of Geophysical Contractors and chairman of the board of the National Ocean Industries Association. The governments, boards, panels, associations and societies which have had the benefit of his counsel are too numerous to list. He left a positive and valuable contribution in every instance.
     Yet despite these many undertakings, Carl has raised a fine family and maintained his sense of proportion and good nature. I have known him as a competitor, teacher, colleague, and coworker. It has been a privilege to have seen him in each of the varying contexts. No honor awarded by our Society has been earned with greater effort nor is more richly deserved.

     Norman S. Neidell