Robert G. Coleman

On October 18, 2020, Robert G. Coleman, Emeritus Professor of Geology at Stanford University, loving husband of Cathryn, father of three sons, six grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren passed away at the age of 97. Bob was born January 5, 1923 in Twin Falls, Idaho to Lloyd Wilbur and Frances Brown Coleman. He attended Oregon State University on a football scholarship and played on the practice squad for the 1942 Rose Bowl champions. He joined the war effort as a Marine in 1943 and spent most of the war at the Cherry Point air base as a radar technician. After the war, he returned to Oregon State and earned his bachelor's degree in geology in 1948. In 1950, he completed a master's in geology from Oregon State and then earned a geology PhD from Stanford in 1957. While finishing his doctorate, Bob taught at LSU, worked for the Atomic Energy Commission in New York City, and began a 30-year career at the USGS. He was a professor at Stanford from 1982-1993-best known for teaching minerology classes outdoors on the lawn in front of the Mitchell Building. Bob's detailed field studies and geologic mapping supported the emerging theory of plate tectonics. His enduring passions were serpentine and ophiolitic rocks, investigating them throughout western North America, New Zealand, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, inner Mongolia, Japan, Cuba, Guatemala, and the Paleo-Asian ocean. He was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences in 1980, and the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1994. In 2016, he was awarded Stanford's Distinguished Alumni award. Bob was preceded in death by his wife Cathryn, and is survived by his three sons and their spouses, R. Griffin Coleman, Jr. and his wife of Redwood City, CA, Derrick Coleman and Amelia Naccarto-Coleman of Irvine, CA, and Mark and Julie Coleman of Moscow, ID. Bob's curiosity and thirst for knowledge were internationally acknowledged and appreciated. His humor, openness and charismatic manner were responsible for worldwide scientific interchange.