VIRGIL E. BARNES
(1903-1998)
Virgil Barnes was born June 11, 1903, in Chehalis, Washington. He earned his BS
and MS degrees in geology at Washington State College (now Washington State
University) and his PhD in geology at the University of Wisconsin in 1930. He
first worked for the American Petroleum Institute in Austin and later for the
U.S. Geological Survey in Amarillo, Texas. Dr. Barnes joined the Bureau of
Economic Geology at UT-Austin in 1935, retired in 1977, but remained active at
the BEG until his death. Although Dr. Barnes held the rank of Professor in the
Department of Geological Sciences and he presented occasional seminars and
served on graduate student committees, he did no classroom teaching nor graduate
student supervision.
Dr. Barnes long record of geologic research covered many areas: economic
geology, mineralogy, petrology, geophysics, and stratigraphy. Much of his
activity as a University researcher involved geologic mapping. More than 100
geologic maps were made and published by Barnes. He put together the monumental
Geologic Atlas of Texas--38 sheets at a scale of 1:250,000. This task took a
quarter of a century to compile. In his later professional years, Dr. Barnes
undoubtedly knew more about the surface geology of Texas than any other
geologist.
Barnes greatest scientific interest and research, however, was devoted to black
glassy objects known as tektites. These first came to his attention in 1936 and
were originally thought to be meteorites. He quickly came to the conclusion that
tektites were terrestrial in origin and were generated during meteorite impacts
with the Earth. His 1940 University publication on North American Tektites
became a basic reference during the Space Age and is now considered a classic
work. Investigations during the great surge in tektite research in the sixties
verified the conclusion earlier reached by Barnes.
Dr. Barnes twice traveled around the world with grants from the National Science
Foundation to visit all known tektite sites and a number of impact craters. His
long and careful research on tektites won him the coveted Barringer Medal, which
he received from the Meteoritical Society in Vienna. His wife, Mildred (Milla),
accompanied Barnes on many of his travels and served as secretary and counselor.
In 1988 Dr. Barnes was named Distinguished Texas Scientist by the Texas Academy
of Science; in 1993 he received the Public Service Award from the American
Association of Petroleum Geologists.
Barnes’s many decades of field geology, in Texas and around the globe,
were never stopped by the onset of an early, protracted and severe case of
painful ankylosing spondylitis, which left many of his vertebrae fused. Even
with this condition, he was notorious for out-walking other geologists when he
led field trips.
Barnes was the author or co-author of nearly 300 books, articles, maps, and
abstracts in his long scientific career. One of his latest official duties was
to write his memoirs, On Solid Ground: Memoirs of a Texas Geologist, published
in 1995 by the Bureau of Economic Geology.
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