SOLAR SYSTEM

Stoney's Story

by Jack Farmer

The week before I started college I sat down with my dad to talk about my plans. He suggested I should choose a major before leaving for school and that it should be something I really enjoyed.

When I asked my dad what he thought I would be good at, he said, "Ever since I can remember, you have been interested in rocks. You and your mom wouldn't let me go past a riverbed without stopping during our drives in the country. You have an uncle who used to work with rocks -- I think he called himself a geologist."

So the next week I headed off to school to meet with my counselor and asked if she knew about a major for geologists. She said yes, so I declared my major the first semester and never looked back.

I've never regretted my decision. Geology is so broad and interdisciplinary; I've moved around a lot within the field during my career. I started out in volcanology, moved to geochemistry for a while, then to statistics, and on to paleontology. Today I work in the field of planetary science. The interesting thing is that I continue to use most all of that background, even in the work I'm doing now!

I collected my first rock when I was six years old. By the time I was 10, my collection was so big I had to give a lot of rocks away when we moved. Growing up, my room looked like a museum. I guess it still does. My wife calls my part of the house the "Smithsonian Wing" in honor of all the wonderful things I have collected over the years.

My mom encouraged me by providing empty egg cartons for storing my samples. She also helped me to identify my rocks, minerals, and fossils. She even bought me my first geology book, How to Know the Rocks and Minerals, and took me to my first geology meeting, a giant rock and minerals show in Los Angeles.

I was hooked early! My nickname in high school was "Stoney."

I took all the science classes I could in school. But I did not have the advantage of going to schools with strong science programs. I motivated myself to go to the library by inventing projects. Books were some of my best friends growing up, and they helped me maintain my interest and growth in science.

I received a Ph.D. in paleontology from the University of California at Davis in 1978. Shortly after finishing my degree, I went to work as museum scientist at the geology department there at Davis. My job was to assemble collections of minerals, rocks, and fossils.

We used those materials to help teach courses in geology and paleontology and to support the research being carried out by the faculty. I also taught courses in geology and paleontology.

After five years as museum scientist I decided to try another career. I joined Exxon as a petroleum geologist. My job with Exxon was to find oil. I focused my search on the offshore marine areas of southern California. During my five-year stay with Exxon I found between five and 10 million barrels of oil.

Although I enjoyed finding oil, I really missed teaching. I was able to land a job teaching oceanography, Earth science, and paleontology at UCLA in southern California. I was there for five years.

During my time at UCLA, I developed my present interests in the very early history of life and the solar system. Those interests took me to NASA in 1991, where I worked developing methods to better interpret the fossil record of microorganisms.

That work was quite a change from my early years as a paleontologist where I focused on larger organisms with hard skeletons of bone or shell. Now I had to worry about how very small organisms with no skeletons could become fossils.

In August 1998, I accepted a faculty position at Arizona State University with the department of geology, which is where I am today. I also lead the NASA-funded Astrobiology program at ASU.

The best thing about my job is the excitement of exploring ancient worlds, either on Earth by looking back in time at old rocks, or in space by looking at old planetary surfaces or the planetary materials brought to the Earth as meteorites.

My job is also fun because of all the fascinating people I meet, and the interesting seminars and discussions we have every week. It's wonderfully challenging to go into the field and try and reconstruct past events from the meager clues provided in the rocks.

It also is great fun to bring samples back to the lab and tease out more clues using the microscope and other tools. Sometimes I feel like I'm Sherlock Holmes solving a crime. And I have often thought, if I ever stopped doing geology, I would like to try forensics.

Jack Farmer is a planetary geologist and the director of ASU's Astrobiology program.