|
|
|
|
|
|
Geology professor William
Fischer has taught many students that “the field is our textbook.”
And that lesson, which aptly reflects his lifelong commitment to
integrating teaching and research, probably was peppered with, “Boy,
oh wow, isn’t this something?” — an endearing enthusiasm for his
craft that made him one of CC’s favorite professors.
Fischer, who began as an instructor in Geology at Colorado College in 1949, retired as chairman of the department in 1982. He was the third recipient of the prestigious A.E. and Ethel Irene Carlton Professorship in 1976, in what then-President Worner called “an obviously deserved appointment.” Prior to his affiliation with CC, Fischer worked as a geologist for Carter Oil Company and with the Los Alamos Atomic Research Plant in New Mexico. During WW2 he served for 2 years in the U.S. Navy as Gunnery Officer aboard the USS Kishwaukee in the South Pacific. His summers as a park naturalist at Yellowstone National Park from 1947 to 1949 led to his later appointment as park geologist. After the powerful 1959 earthquake in Yellowstone — which caused lakes to slosh for 11 hours, Old Faithful to go on an erratic schedule, and brought about more geologic change in one night than would normally appear in several thousand years — Fischer was appointed to head the follow-up study. He took a leave of absence from the college, moved to Yellowstone, and wrote Yellowstone’s Living Geology, an overview of the famous park’s geology. His foreword to the book indicates the scope of the job: “I have attempted to condense pertinent highlights of the past 70 million years as they relate to an understanding of the earthquake ….” In the early 1970s, Fischer learned of a fossil bed near Canon City; he spent nearly a decade teaching at and excavating the site of an ancient lagoon there. His work uncovered a significant number of fossils, previously unknown to the area, from roughly 450 million years ago — including evidence of a now-extinct “sea scorpion” that sported lengths of up to six feet! Fischer recorded the earliest findings of cartilage as a precursor to primitive bone, enthusiastically reporting that this would “shed important light on the origin of the early vertebrates by settling the 75-year controversy on the habitat of the chordates …” He wrote the Guide to the Geology of the Pikes Peak Region, an educated layman’s guide, in the mid-1960s, as well as numerous scholarly papers. In wake of atomic-age fears in the early 1960s, he studied the development possibilities of underground water resources in the Pikes Peak region with the support of a community service grant from CC. He is a member of the Colorado-Wyoming Academy of Science and of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. And in 1963, he was the only Colorado geologist selected to participate in a special NSF-sponsored summer conference on geology. Bill’s personal commitment to Colorado College is clearly demonstrated by the fact that he and wife Eleanor sent their children Dennis, Susan and Judith to the college. Now three grandchildren have graduated or are attending CC. He continues to give us his best. Bill Fischer never stops teaching, even after retiring. One of the most popular faculty at alumni seminars and events, Bill has given alumni a chance to learn the geology they meant to while students by taking alumni down the Colorado River through Grand Canyon – the best geology textbook on the face of the earth. His excitement at fossilized worm tracks, the nautiloid fossils with their jet propulsion chambers, the Devonian river channels, and the “Great Unconformity” are greeted with the same enthusiasm on the part of the teacher as the student. His regular appearance at alumni college excursions to the Baca Campus have helped alumni continue to learn. He accomplishes all of this with a gentleness and a humor that has endeared him to alumni of all ages. |
