William Henry Mathews
(1919–2003) was a Canadian
geologist, volcanologist,
engineer, and professor. He is considered a pioneer in
the study of
subglacial
eruptions and volcano-ice interactions in North America. Many
of his publications continue to be regarded as classics in their
field, even now several decades after they were written.
Biography
Bill
Mathews was born in Vancouver
, British
Columbia
in
1919. His childhood was marked by personal tragedy, as his
mother and a brother died when he was two, and his father,
Vancouver pioneer Thomas Mathews, died when he was 13.
Mathews
attended King George Secondary School
before entering the University of
British Columbia
in 1935, earning a Bachelor of Applied Science in
geological engineering in 1940, followed by a Master of Applied
Science with a major in petrology and a
minor in physics in 1941. During college, he served as a
student assistant for the
Geological Survey of Canada from
1938 to 1941, and was also an instructor in the mountain infantry
school of the
Alpine Club of
Canada, training personnel for the Canadian armed forces. After
graduation, he worked as a
mining
engineer for the British Columbia Department of Mines from 1942
to 1946.
He then
moved on to the University of California,
Berkeley
, completing his Ph.D. in June 1948 with a dissertation
titled Geology of the Mount Garibaldi
map-area, southwestern British
Columbia. While at Berkeley, he also met and married
his wife, Laura Lou. Mathews served on the Berkeley faculty as an
assistant professor from 1948 to
1951, and then returned to Canada to accept an
associate professorship in the
Department of Geography and Geology at the University of British
Columbia. He was promoted to full
professor in 1959, served as department chairman
from 1964 to 1971, and continued teaching until his retirement to
professor emeritus status in 1984.
Mathews received the
Willet
G. Miller Medal for
"outstanding research in any branch of the earth sciences" from the
Royal Society of Canada in
1989. Even after his retirement from teaching duties, he maintained
an active research program and began writing a book on the geology
of southern British Columbia, working part-time on the project
until his death in 2003. The book was published posthumously in
2005 as
Roadside Geology of Southern British
Columbia.
Scientific research
Mathews scientific work embraced a broad spectrum of topics,
including
volcanoes,
glaciers, regional
geomorphology,
landslides,
hydrogeology,
stratigraphy,
coal geology,
and
mineral deposits. But his most
influential work was in the fields of subglacial eruptions and
volcano-ice interactions.
He discovered several ideal field
laboratories for this research in his home province of British
Columbia, including the numerous volcanoes in Garibaldi
Provincial Park
just north of Vancouver and the remote Tuya Volcanic
Field
in far northern British Columbia. While
still in graduate school at Berkeley in 1947, he published a paper,
"Tuyas, Flat-Topped Volcanoes in Northern British Columbia", in
which he coined the term "
tuya" to refer to the
distinctive, flat-topped, steep-sided volcanoes formed when lava
erupts through a thick glacier or
ice
sheet.
He took the name from Tuya Butte
, a near-ideal specimen of the type, and this name
has since become standard worldwide among volcanologists in
referring to and writing about these volcanic formations.
Late in
his career, other scientists named a previously unnamed tuya in the
Tuya Volcanic
Field in honor of him as Mathews Tuya
.
Mathews published his first article, titled "Geology of the
Garibaldi Lake area", in the
Canadian Alpine Journal in 1938
when he was only 19 years old. He would go on to author more than
100 published scientific papers and reports over the next six
decades. A large portion of this body of work is devoted to the
numerous fascinating volcanic, glacial, and
limnological features of Garibaldi Provincial
Park, which he examines, analyzes, and interprets in meticulous
detail and with far-reaching insight.
Bibliography
Books and theses
- (includes biographical sketch)
Selected significant articles
Honors and memberships
References
)
Wikis
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