January 2006 ISSUE
obituary
dr. william carruthers gussow, p.geol., p.eng.
Life Member Dr. William (Bill) Carruthers Gussow, P.Geol., P.Eng., passed away peacefully in Ottawa on Aug. 20 in his 98th year, having lived a life full of multiple careers and abundant, progressive thought.
His family moved from England to Ottawa, where his father, Dr. H.T. Gussow, took up office as the Dominion Botanist of Canada. Bill earned his B.Sc. (mining engineering) in 1933 and then a M.Sc. (geology) in 1935 from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., followed by a PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1938.
Dr. Gussow returned to Kingston where he taught at Queen’s and Royal Military College. During the war he was an office engineer with the Shipshaw Power Develop-ment project, before switching to exploration and petroleum geology with Shell Canada in Texas and then in Calgary, and retiring in 1971 from Union Oil of California.
His accomplishments have been recognized throughout his career. In 1955 he
was
invited to be a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada for his contributions to
geology. It was especially heart warm-ing for him to receive that honour because
his father was also a fellow of the society. To have father and son fellows at
the same time was quite unusual.
He was a founding member of the Geological Association of Canada in 1947, served on its Council from 1958 to 1960, and in 1997 received his GAC 50th-year member award.
Dr. Gussow served as president of the Alberta Society of Petroleum Geologists (now the CSPG) in 1959 and is remembered by current CSPG office staff as being frugal to the end. He preferred public transportation over a taxi when he attended the 1998 CSPG Convention in Calgary at the ripe old age of only 90.
In 1998 he was awarded the Stanley Slipper Medal by the CSPG and became an honor-ary member of the American Institute of Petroleum Geology. In 2000 the AAPG named him winner of its prestigious Pioneer Award, given to “longstanding members who have contributed to the organization and who have made meaningful and significant contributions to the science of geology.”
In 2002 the CSPG named its annual topical conference as the William C. Gussow Geoscience Conference Series. Two successful conferences have been held in this series — the first in 2004 examined Water Resources and Energy Development, and 2005’s focused on Coalbed Methane: Back to the Basics of Coal Geology.
Editor’s Note: This memorial, shortened for publication, was written by Clinton R.. Tippett, P.Geol., chair of the history and archives committee of the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists. It is based upon numerous sources, including family contacts, published citations, personal anecdotes, and interviews that Bill participated in during the Petroleum Industry Oral History project in 1983 and with the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists 75th Anniversary Project in 2002.