Selection of E. V. (Mac) McCollum for the Fessenden Award for 1982 is a distinct credit to the Honors and Awards Committee. This award constitutes a well-deserved recognition of McCollum's pioneering work which launched the world-wide gravity base station network so essential to gravity exploration mapping and now also essential to the military for missile guidance.
     Importance of the gravity base network for gravity mapping ranks on par with the establishment of triangulation and evaluation benchmarks by the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey.
     In practical exploration, it is the rule rather than the exception for projects to be initiated at different geographic locations and then later to expand until the many individual pieces join together like a jigsaw puzzle. Without accurately calibrated
     meters and a common background of systematically established base values (bench marks), the puzzle would be next to impossible to fit together.
     Fortunately, for those of us who had responsibility for obtaining data and presenting gravity maps, Mac fully recognized this problem at a very early date and was primarily responsible for establishing an accurate and usable system of base stations on which our gravity meters could be calibrated and our map values correctly established. Joining of project maps was then a routine matter.
     An impressive array of stations measured by gravity pendulums had been established by the U.S.C. & G.S., but the accuracy of individual stations was not sufficient for meter calibration or base value determination. Skillful use of a very large number of pendulum stations stretching from South to North across the U.S. and portions of Canada and mathematically rigorous methods of adjusting the two sets of data yielded a network of the requisite accuracy. Description of the field methods used, and presentation and analysis of the results, are presented in Mac's "landmark" paper, "Use of the Gravity Meter in Establishment of Gravity Bench Marks," McCollum and Brown, Geophysics, October 1943. It is a real tribute to the Mott-Smith Corporation that they authorized more than 100,000 miles of meter car driving and the man-hours necessary to accomplish this task and that the results were immediately made available to the entire industry.
     My acquaintance with E. V. McCollum began on the day I was first interviewed for employment by Continental Oil Company in June 1943, and has continued to this date with the inclusion of much working together and much enjoyment of each other's company. During our years together in Ponca City, it was my privilege to be invited many times to Mac's office for conversation about his latest ideas for the application of rigorous mathematics to all sorts of geophysical problems always aware of the fundamental limits of accuracy of whatever field data were involved. Fortunately (for me), I was the only one in the local organization who had even heard of "Green's Theorem" and several other ramifications of advanced mathematics, and although I was not able to make constructive contributions, I could listen, nod my head and exclaim in admiration at the right places so Mac felt that he had a listener who at least knew the language. This substantiates the old axiom, "Never hire only one mathematician he must have someone to whom he can talk."
     When Mac left Conoco to go with the Mott-Smith Corporation, our relationship became that of contractor and client. This relationship persisted with even more vigor when he teamed up with Craig Ferris to form E. V. McCollum & Co. Here we found that Mac was truly the personification of accuracy, dependability and honor. To those who used his services during these years, his work still stands as absolutely dependable.
     Mac attended the University of Oklahoma, studying under Dr. William Schriever and others, receiving his M.S. degrees in 1926. He then worked for the Marland Oil Co. and Continental Oil Co. until 1939. During this tenure, he had extensive field experience with the old Gordon Taylor mechanical seismograph and with the torsion balance. Locale of this experience ranged from Mexico through the mid-continent oil patch and into Canada. His was a pioneering introduction into a very new field of endeavor and he
     always made his full contribution. His experience with the torsion balance probably laid the foundation for his later work in gravity gradients as a useful tool in gravity interpretation.
     Mac has been active in affairs of the SEG since 1936, having served as Secretary-Treasurer in 1948-1949, and as President in 1958-1959. That his chief aim in his professional life was for perfection is exemplified in the subject chosen for his paper, "Quality of Geophysical Measurements" (Geophysics, January 1952) and in his Presidential address "Geophysical Parameters" (Geophysics, February 1960) which was a plea for more accurate measurements of basic quantities. This would allow higher accuracy in the final data submitted to help unravel geophysical and geological problems. This was truly Mac's aim in life and to which he devoted his very superior efforts.

     John M. Crawford