(1923- ) American Structural Geologist, Tectonics
William Muehlberger is perhaps most renowned for his work with NASA. He was principal investigator for field geology for the Apollo 16 and Apollo 17 lunar landings. His group was involved in landing site selection, detailed geologic analysis of the landing site, sampling traverse design, astronaut training, real-time support during the missions, and post-mission data compilation and analysis. He served this position for three years. Muehlberger was also a co-investigator for the NASA Visual Observations Experiment in Skylab and the Apollo-Soyuz missions. He was responsible for global tectonics, giving lectures to astronauts, debriefing afterward, and offering advice on changes during the mission. This program continued with the space shuttle, where he has been teaching geology to newly assigned astronauts and to crews prior to their flight.
However, the work with NASA is just the tip of the iceberg in a long and distinguished career. Muehlberger is a regional geologist whose scale of observation ranges from outcrop (or even microscope) to satellite images. He is a structural geologist by trade who has studied brittle fault zones and fracture systems worldwide, but especially in Texas, Turkey, Israel, New Zealand, and Guatemala. He also studied basement lineaments and correlated geophysical data with them. Muehlberger studied salt domes and the deformation around them in Texas and Louisiana (for example, the paper, “Internal Structures and Mode of Uplift of Texas and Louisiana Salt Domes”). On the other hand, he studied glacial geomorphology in New England. With all of his extensive observations of the character of the Earth’s crust, he was the ideal person to help assemble large-scale maps and to help educate NASA astronauts.
William Muehlberger was born on September 26, 1923, in New York, New York, but grew up in Hollywood, California. He entered college at the California Institute of Technology in 1941, but the U.S. Marine Corps sent him to University of California at Berkeley in civil engineering in 1943. He stayed there until 1944, one semester shy of a degree. He returned to the California Institute of Technology in 1946 and earned his bachelor of science degree and his master of science degree there in 1949 and his Ph.D. in 1954. William Muehlberger married Sally J. Provine in 1949; they have two children. He joined the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin in 1954 and remained there until his retirement in 1992 when he became professor emeritus. He was director of the Crustal Studies Laboratory at the University of Texas from 1962 to 1966. He served as chairman of the department from 1966 to 1970. Muehlberger was on leave from the university from 1970 to 1973 and employed by the U.S. Geological Survey for the NASA Apollo field geology investigations for the Apollo program. He held numerous endowed chairs at the University of Texas, including the Fred M. Bullard Professorship for excellence in teaching (1980-82), the Charles E. Yager Professorship (1982-83), the John E. (‘Brick’) Elliott Centennial Endowed Professorship in Geological Sciences (1983-85), the William Stamps Farish Chair in Geology (1985-89), and the Peter T. Flawn Centennial Chair in Geology (1989-92).
William R. Muehlberger in his office at the University of Texas
William Muehlberger has led an extremely productive career publishing more than 200 articles in international journals and collected volumes. He is perhaps better known for producing the Basement Map of the United States, published by the U.S. Geological Survey in 1966, and the Tectonic Map of North America in plate tectonic format in 1992-1996 and published by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. He has received many honors and awards from the profession for his contributions to the science. He received the First Award from Ohio State University in 1961, the George C. Mattson Award (best paper) from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists in 1965, and the
Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement (1973) and the Public Service Medal (1999) both from NASA. He also received the 1998 Best Paper Award from the Structure/Tectonics Division of the Geological Society of America. In 1978, he was given the Houston Oil and Mineral Corporation Faculty Excellence Award and in 1992 he received the Knebel Distinguished Teaching Award.
William Muehlberger also performed much service to the profession. He served on the U.S. Geodynamics Committee, several committees for the National Research Council, as well as for NASA. He served on many committees for Geological Society of America, American Association of Petroleum Geologists, and the American Geophysical Union. He was an associate editor for Geological Society of America Bulletin and for Geophysical Research Letters.
