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In the beginning

A 60-year retrospective on mining geophysics

Corresponding author: hseigel@rogers.com

Editor's note: This article is based on remarks to the Canadian Exploration Geophysical Society (KEGS) as part of a celebration of the author's 80th birthday. Seigel received the Maurice Ewing Medal, SEG's highest honor, in 1995 and the award citation summarizing his career was published in TLE in February 1996.

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

First let me extend warm greetings and thanks to all fellow KEGS members who have seen fit to listen to the ramblings of an ancient geophysicist. I am deeply touched by your presence here and by the individual e-mail tributes that I have received from colleagues who could not attend today. This event proves that longevity can bring rewards, as well as the more usual aches and pains.

This is the 51st year since the founding of KEGS. For me, this year marks the 61st anniversary of my first contact with the wondrous world of mining geophysics. No doubt each of us in this room has a story to tell as to what led him or her to embark on a geophysical career. My own story started in the summer of 1943, as a first-year undergrad in maths and physics at the University of Toronto. Through a chance invitation from Professor Lachlan Gilchrist, I found myself conducting a dip-needle magnetic survey north of Lake Huron. I knew absolutely zero about geology or geophysics at that time, including the dip-needle survey I was conducting. I stayed at a fishing lodge with excellent accommodations. After a pleasant day hiking over quartzite outcrops and an excellent dinner at the lodge, I went fishing or blueberry picking in the long summer evenings. I enjoyed the whole experience so much that, after completing my undergrad degree, I was drawn in the direction of geophysics as a career. To be honest, however, by that time I had learned enough about the geophysical methods then in use to feel that some were badly in need of quantitative mathematical development, to which objective I might make a useful contribution. Three years of graduate studies then led to a PhD in geophysics and a lifetime of commitment to this . . . [Full Text of this Article]