AASP Primary Records Program

AASP Newsletter 26(2): p. 7-10, 1993.
G.L. Williams
Allan D. Partridge

Lewis E. Stover
1925-1993

Dr. Lewis E. Stover, Lew to his numerous friends, died on 13th March, 1993, after a short illness. The sudden loss of this gifted scientist came as a shock to all his friends in the palynological and geological communities. His absence will have a profound effect on those colleagues who have worked with him closely and have come to appreciate his many qualities.

Seemingly insignificant events have a major impact on one's life. Lew was no exception. After serving in the U.S. airforce in the later years of World War II, he enrolled at Dickinson College, in Pennsylvania, to take a degree in engineering. Finding biology and geology more to his liking he decided to major in the former, partly because there was only one geology professor. However, the enthusiasm of this professor convinced him that a geologist's lot was indeed a happy one, so after graduation he enrolled in the postgraduate program of the Geology Department, Rochester University. At the same, he enrolled in a lifelong commitment to Nan, his wife. They married before moving to Rochester and together experienced the joys of living in the snow belt.

The focus of Lew's research at Rochester was on Devonian ostracodes and marine megafossil communities. His supervisor was Bill Evitt, at that time a trilobite specialist. Neither of them realized how much their interests would change in the succeeding years and what a major impact they would have on palynology.

How did the conversion occur? The chairman of the Geology Department had a brother, Bill Hoffmeister, who was a palynologist with Carter Oil in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The upshot of Bill Hoffmeister's talk to the graduate students was that, upon obtaining his Ph.D. in 1956, Lew was offered a job with Carter Oil. Lew's inquisitive nature and motivation soon led to his involvement in several major palynological studies, initially on Carboniferous spores. His enthusiasm also convinced Bill Evitt that life with an oil company had advantages and soon the two were working side by side in the north Tulsa laboratory.

During Lew's professional career of thirty years, he stayed with the same company although the name changed, first to Jersey Production Research Company and ultimately to Exxon Production Research Company. Most of this time was spent in Houston, where the Stover family moved in 1965; the only major interruption was a three year posting to Australia from 1969 to 1972.

Lew Stover's accomplishments while at Exxon were legion. He pioneered the use of Cretaceous calcareous nannofossils for biostratigraphic control; he described some of the ephedroid and elateroid pollen from the Cretaceous of west Africa; he demonstrated the similarities between Early Cretaceous spore and pollen assemblages of Maryland and England and postulated their close proximity in the Cretaceous, thereby anticipating the idea of the opening of the Atlantic Ocean; he, and his Australian colleagues, developed the accepted biostratigraphic zonation for the Late Creataceous-Early Tertiary of the Gippsland, Bass and Otway basins, offshore southeast Australia; he provided biostatigraphic input for the Mesozoic-Cenozoic global cycle charts; and he consistently published outstanding papers on dinoflagellate morphology, taxonomy, stratigraphy and paleoecology. One such paper, "Analyses of pre-Pleistocene organic-walled dinoflagellates", published with Bill Evitt, is a classic.

What of Lew Stover the person? I first realized that Lew was human when he attended a course on Cretaceous dinoflagellates that Evan Kidson and I presented at Louisiana State University in 1976. He foolishly sat on the front row and was continually having to duck, because I would suddenly swing around while still holding a lethal wooden pointer. Probably to protect himself, Lew asked if I would like to help him present a course on Tertiary dinoflagellates the following year.

Preparation of the course material involved several trips to Houston, where invariably I was made to feel welcome by his wife, Nan. Like Lew, Nan has a mischievous sense of humour so I always had to be on my guard. I also met Nan and Lew's three children, Jim, Barbara and Virginia.

After Lew and I had given the Tertiary course in Baton Rouge in September, 1977, we had to drive back to Houston. Upon arriving at Lew's, he informed me that he had lost the key to the house and we would have to break in through a second-floor window, since Nan was out of town. What he hadn't told me was that he would climb the ladder while I stayed at the bottom and made friends with Mick, the Stover's exceedingly protective dog. As soon Lew started on the ladder, Mick started on me, convinced that I was a threat to the safety of the family. Fortunately I could climb faster than Lew, even if we were both on the same ladder and he was on a higher rung. So, I arrived at the second-floor window first, much to Lew's surprise. And then he had the audacity to find the missing key in his jacket pocket.

In spite of this experience, Lew and I remained close friends and were involved in several projects at the time of his death. Lew never ceased to amaze me with his grasp of geology in general, his understanding of sequence stratigraphy, his unparalleled knowledge of dinoflagellate morphology and stratigraphy; and his meticulous attention to accuracy. As a microscopist he was superb but his motivation was more than the deciphering of a complex morphology. He wanted to use that understanding ultimately to more precisely establish biostratigraphic control.

The greatest lessons I learnt from Lew Stover were to look beyond the horizon and not to blindly accept dogma, even when published. On several occasions he demonstrated this, such as when he convinced me that several Southern Hemisphere species were not identical to coeval Northern Hemisphere taxa, as I had misguidedly concluded.

All of us would like to believe that we have a positive impact on our chosen profession and that we have expanded the horizons of scientific knowledge. Lew certainly did. He set standards which are impossible to emulate and always demonstrated the highest integrity in his research. A recognition of his standing was the award of its Medal for Scientific Excellence by the American Association of Stratigraphic Palynologists in 1989.

In 1989, Lew retired from Exxon Production Research but continued to work at the same demanding pace as a consultant. The following year, Nan and Lew moved to Kerrville. It was a relief being able to walk rather than drive to the office, which was located in one corner of the spacious back yard. But there was little other evidence of someone in retirement. Lew worked hard, as always, and continued his commitment to publishing his scientific findings.

Lew Stover was one of the most dedicated members of the American Association of the Stratigraphic Palynologists. There are many scientists who do not consider they have any responsibilities to the scientific community. Lew was not to this ilk. He worked tirelessly for A.A.S.P., commencing with his role as a founding member in 1967. He served as the first editor of the Association from 1967-1969, setting the consistently high standard that have been maintained to the present day. Further honours came in 1980 when Lew became President-Elect and in 1981 when he deservedly became President. Over the years, he was a continuing contributor to the Foundation Century Club, one of many examples of his commitment to the Association.

What have we who are left behind lost? The world of palynology has lost a mentor; those studying dinoflagellates have lost the most knowledgeable and talented biostratiigrapher in the field; I have lost my best friend; and Jim, Barbara, and Virginia have lost a father. But the greatest loss is Nan's.

By G.L. Williams

Lew Stover's Australian Connection

Lewis E. Stover made a major contribution to stratigraphic palynology and particularly to Australian palynology.

Lew became directly involved in Australian palynology, to the best of my knowledge, in 1965 with the drilling of Esso Gippsland Shelf No. 1, which was the first offshore well in Australia and also the discovery well for the giant Barracouta gas field in the Gippsland Basin in south-eastern Australia. As Lew told the story, the problem was the usual communications breakdown between the operations people at Esso Australia Ltd. In Sydney, Australia and his managers at EPRCo in Houston with the palynologist caught in the middle. The company was eligible for a generous government subsidy provided the well penetrated Cretaceous age sediments which ere mapped, based on seismic and extrapolation from the adjacent onshore, only a short distance below the top of an Early Tertiary coal measures sequence. But as was typical of many early wells on the continental shelves around the world a much thicker coal measures sequence was found than had been anticipated. Because the sequence was non-marine samples were rushed to ERPCo in Houston for age dating by Lew and colleague Dan Jones. At that time the difference between the spore-pollen assemblages for the Late Cretaceous and Early Tertiary in Australia had not been fully documented so Lew and Dan relied largely on the palynological succession documented in New Zealand (R.A. Couper, 1960: Geol. Surv. N.Z. Paleo. Bull. No. 32, 1-88). The tope of the Cretaceous was correctly picked on Tricolpites lilliei Couper within the coal measures, but then came the squeeze. Lew's management at the time wanted a Tertiary age because faulty communication led them to believe that age was what was required. Lew stuck to his guns, the age was duly telexed to Sydney, and the well stopped. The original age dating stands today. As the trainee palynologist to whom this story was imparted a few years later the lesson was driven home - make sure your identifications are correct and be prepared to defend your position.

Lew followed this auspicious start by doing the palynology, often in collaboration with colleagues at EPRCo, of subsequent wells and discoveries in the Gippsland Basin. But it was soon obvious that the escalating drilling program being undertaken by Esso in Australia was too difficult to service from Houston. Thus Lew first came to visit Australia in 1966 to meet the local palynology community and recruit a palynologist for the local affiliate. P.R. (Dick) Evans was fired and a palynological laboratory was established for Esso Australia Ltd. at the University of NSW in 1968. Lew often recounted an anecdote of his first meeting with Robin Helby. Lew asked to see some "southern beeches" the common name for Nothofagus, the trees whose pollen are so ubiquitous and abundant in the Tertiary of south-eastern Australia. Robin, who was a member of a surf life-saving club at a northern Sydney beach kindly conducted an increasingly puzzled Lew on a tour of Sydney's famous "surfing beaches".

Lew came out to Australia on assignment to Esso Australia Ltd. between 1969 to 1972 specifically to work up dinoflagellate taxonomy and develop a Tertiary zonation as this group of palynomorphs was becoming increasingly important to the drilling program in the Bass Strait Basins. This exercise exposed Lew to a wide range of material including the types of many of the dinoflagellates described by Isabel Cookson and her co-workers. In fact, it was a key turning point in his career with dinoflagellates dominating his palynological research over the next two decades. Whilst in Australia Lew also did routine service work on exploration wells and was the driving force behind the publication of the most widely used Late Cretaceous to Tertiary spore-pollen zonation in Australia (Stover & Partridge, 1973: Proc. R. Soc. Vict. 85, 237-286). It also should be appreciated that not all of Lew's contribution to palynology can be evaluated from his published papers. He produced many superb company reports which were particularly strong in the area of taxonomic description and illustration. That much of this work remains unpublished is not entirely due to proprietary and competitive pressures within the oil industry. One case in point, is the photographic catalogue of Isabel Cookson's Tertiary dinoflagellate types which Lew prepared in 1971. Because of superior microscope equipment Lew obtained much better illustrations of Cookson's specimens. But ever the gentleman he refused to publish this work because of the possibility that it might detract from the significance of Cookson's contribution to palynology.

Lew's research on dinoflagellates during the 1970's culminated in 1978 with the publication in collaboration with W. R. (Bill) Evitt of a comprehensive review of all pre-Pleistocene organic-walled dinoflagellates (Stanford University Publication, Geological Sciences Vol. 15, 1978). During the several years of gestation of this work Lew kept in touch with his Australian colleagues with a constant stream of requests for information on those Australian dinoflagellate type he had not examined during his assignment to Australia.

Lew returned to Australia in 197 to give the first dinoflagellate course four palynologists in Australia, run under the auspices of the Earth Resource Foundation at the University of Sydney. The Australian materials prepared for this course were subsequently recycled by Lew into his many other short courses and presentations given in the northern hemisphere. During this visit plans for major publications synthesising the Mesozoic and Cenozoic palynological succession in Australia were outlined. For Lew this meant several more trips to Australia and further collaboration with Australian colleagues. Ultimately this work culminated in 1987 (after some delays caused by the rapid growth then downsizing of the oil industry in the early 1980s) with the publication of Memoir 4 of the Association of Australasian Palaeontologists titled "Studies in Australian Mesozoic Palynology". In this volume Lew contributed to six dinoflagellate papers. The plan for a companion volume on Australian Cenozoic palynology was abandoned although some work that Lew was to have contributed to this has been published elsewhere or is still in progress.

Looking back over nearly two and a half decades of collaboration I can truly say that Lew was mentor, friend and an exceptional palynologist.

Alan D. Partridge.