Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPter 8
The Great Oxidation
The year was 1990, and I was invited to interview for a job at the Uni-
versity of California, Santa Barbara. Academic interviews are grueling
affairs. They typically occupy two full days of discussions with faculty
members, and everyone is looking for some superhuman mix of intel-
lectual and teaching brilliance. This, combined with the right personal-
ity and interests to bind together disparate factions of the department
who have not spoken in years. As usual for such an interview, I gave
a departmental seminar where I discussed my work and presented some
ideas as to where my work might lead in the future. Preston Cloud was
there. He was a wisp of a man at that point, due to failing health, but
even so, his mere presence made me nervous. I collected myself and
gave a talk that may have been OK (but not great, I didn't get the job),
and Cloud listened attentively through it all. After I finished, he came
up, shook my hand, and said he enjoyed the talk. We exchanged a few
pleasantries about Yale, where he also obtained his PhD, and then he
left. I never saw him again; he was only to live another year.
Common for scientists of his generation, but unusual for scientists
today, Preston Cloud's route to and through academia was indirect and
varied. He was born in 1912, and after finishing high school in 1929
Cloud enlisted in the Navy, where he excelled in boxing. He was dis-
charged in 1933 during the Great Depression, but despite the economic
hardships of the time, he managed to find day work so that he could
