Although it is difficult to convey within a short space the many diverse and cumulative achievements of Robert Schrock, I am proud to have been entrusted with the task of writing about someone who is not only a man of principle, integrity and vision, but who has distinguished himself by his significant contributions as scientist, educator, philanthropist and administrator.
     Robert Rakes Schrock, chairman of the Department of Geology and Geophysics at MIT during the '50s and '60s, was born in 1904, the son of Andrew and Stella Schrock of Wawpecong, Miami County, Indiana. He grew up in a hardworking community and graduated "With Distinction" in 1922. He won a Miami County Scholarship to Indiana University where his work toward a doctoral degree led him to investigate the controversial Silurian "domes" exposed along the Wabash and Mississinewa rivers in northern Indiana, a study that led to recognition of a new sequence of Silurian strata. Indiana University award Schrock a PhD in geology in 1928 and, 43 years later, in June of 1971, recalled him to receive an honorary degree of doctor of science.
     Trained in invertebrate paleontology, stratigraphy and sedimentology, Robert Schrock began his academic career at the University of Wisconsin where he remained from 1928 through 1937, the year in which he left Madison to join the geology faculty at MIT in Cambridge. It is Thomas Jefferson who wrote that "no duty . . . is so trying as that of putting the right man in the right place." The appointment of Schrock to MIT's Department of Geology was one of those extraordinary fortuitous occasions when the right man was placed in the right place and remained there for 38 fruitful years, during which time he was successively assistant professor, associate professor, and professor.
     During his chairmanship from 1949 to 1965, he brought about an extensive revision of the department's curriculum that involved strengthening the basic science requirements, adding subjects in geochemistry and geophysics, and establishing a required summer field program. In 1956 he initiated together with Professor Houghton, head of meteorology, a joint program in oceanography with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, a program which developed into the joint graduate-degree program that was formalized in 1968. MIT's first oceanographic research vessel was christened the RV R. R. Schrock in December 1965.
     Soon after becoming head of the Department of Geology, Schrock, in tandem with Cecil Green (then president of Geophysical Service Inc.), organized a summer training program for geophysics studentsSthe GSI Student Cooperative PlanSwhich operated for 17 years and gave some 350 students from 80 different US schools an opportunity to get practical field experience in geophysical exploration. The plan proved to be a most successful coupling of industry and academia and has remained a model for the cooperative educational effort. During all the years at MIT, Schrock was consistently outstanding in his ability to recognize and seize the right moments for change and expansion. His vision led to the establishment of the MIT Geophysical Analysis Group (GAG) project whose work has incontestably had a major impact on exploration geophysics.
     Robert Schrock contributed three substantial textbooks for use in his several subjects, all of which continue to be widely used in both North America and abroad. As consulting editor, he was responsible for 28 geologic books for McGraw-Hill's International Series in the Earth Sciences, and he also acted in a similar capacity for paleontology and paleobotany in McGraw-Hill's Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. The last 15 years have been devoted to two large works, Cecil and Ida Green, Philanthropists Extraordinary (an anecdotal biography of his long-time friends), and the two-volume compendium Geology at MIT, 1865-1965 (the best documented history of the creation and life of the department).
     Notwithstanding his many projects and tasks, during his incumbency as head of the department (1949-65) and in the years since, Schrock devoted considerable time and effort to fund-raising for the department and to philanthropic pursuits in support of academic geophysics groups nationwide and beyond.
     Professor Robert Schrock, now emeritus professor at the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at MIT, has always displayed a superb ability to harness and orient scientific energies while simultaneously finding the resources that would nourish them. As an educator he sought to pass on to those around him his unabating enthusiasm for the pursuit of knowledge.
     In making him the recipient of the 1992 SEG Special Commendation Award, the Honors & Awards Committee has recognized his significant contributions to the vigor and progress of our field.
     I feel sure that all will join me in congratulating and wishing him many more years of creative activity.

      M. Nafi Toksöz