This award, designated the SEG Medal Award at its inception in 1961, was renamed in 1977 to recognize Reginald Fessenden for his role as the originator of the concept of reflection and refraction surveying in 1917. It is awarded to a person who has made
     a specific technical contribution to exploration geophysics, such as an invention or a theoretical or conceptual advancement, which, in the opinion of the Honors and Awards Committee and the Executive Committee, merits special recognition.
     R. H. (Bob) Stolt was selected for the Reginald Fessenden Award because of his work in wave equation migration and his F-K migration paper, "Migration by Fourier Transform." Bob's F-K migration makes use of Fourier transforms in both space and
     time, resulting in an algorithm which is both computationally efficient and accurate for steeply dipping events. Once the two-dimensional Fourier transform was taken, Bob made use of the fact that the tangent of the apparent dip angle is equal to the sine of the true dip angle. Migration in F-K space then becomes a matter of frequency shifting determined by this simple geometrical relation. The migrated section in space and time is then obtained by an inverse transform. The algorithm becomes, with a little physical insight, a clean and efficient work of art and not a clumsy, brute force approach consisting of many Fourier transforms. The paper was received by the Editor of Geophysics in September 1976, presented to the Stanford Exploration Project (SEP) in May 1977, and finally published in February 1978. However, because of the release through SEP, the results were widely known and used much earlier than the publication date by purchase of software based on Bob's analysis.
     As a result of this work, Bob was asked to direct the SEP for the 1979-1980 academic year while Jon Claerbout was on sabbatical. In a characteristic manner, Bob decided to accept this new challenge leaving behind almost all of his old books, old problems, and old ideas, with some concept of interacting with the students at Stanford and examining anew the ideas of scattering theory. This new venture and interaction was very successful, and the exciting new results may force us all to learn more about scattering theory, Gelfand-Levitan algorithms, and even Dirac notation!
     Bob Stolt is one of those quietly competent physicists who enjoys his family, religion, science, and fellowship with others in rarely balanced fashion. His contentment with himself and his confidence in his own abilities allows him to face the outside world with an open mind and an unpretentious manner. These qualities, coupled with such a warm personality and willingness to help others, makes his advice constantly sought after from his peers, since seldom can one obtain such valued advice and counsel so painlessly. With the possible exception of Einstein, he holds no one in too high esteem and, similarly, holds contempt for no man. His sense of humor makes him a pleasure to work with and often allows him to become the "soft shoe" act in any
     sequence of presentations. It is impossible to sleep through one of his talks for fear you might miss one of his subtle jokes, a tricky bit of mathematical physics, or his physical insight which suddenly explains the entire phenomenon.
     It is hoped that Bob Stolt's new work on scattering and inverse scattering theory will be as useful and applicable to geophysics as his work on F-K migration.

     Jerry Ware