2 UH researchers win national awards
They are among 15 National Academy of Science honorees
By Alexandre Da Silva
Associated Press
It was a curiosity for "rocks falling from the sky" that got Klaus Keil interested in studying the origin of planets and solar systems nearly 50 years ago.
Now, after 630 published papers on the topic, Keil is being honored with one of the nation's top science awards by the National Academy of Sciences. He is one of two Hawaii faculty members among 15 scientists honored nationwide.
"It was a very nice Christmas gift," said Keil, interim dean of the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology at the University of Hawaii.
The academy announced yesterday that he would receive the J. Lawrence Smith Medal and a $25,000 cash prize.
"The university is making a big deal out of it," he joked.
Steven Stanley, research professor at the university's department of geology and geophysics, was also recognized by the prestigious academy, receiving the Mary Clark Thompson Medal and $15,000.
The award honors important services to geology and paleontology. Stanley's work mostly details how different species adapt to environmental changes.
Stanley, who came to Hawaii last year after 36 years at Johns Hopkins University, said he fell in love with how nature works growing up next to a river valley in Cleveland.
"It's like a hobby. I love it," he said. "It's almost romantic."
Stanley, 64, said he is now wrapping up a paper on a phenomenon he believes caused the death of some nine horse species about 8 million years ago.
STAR-BULLETIN / 2002
The National Academy of Sciences will honor Klaus Keil, interim dean of the UH School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, with one of its top awards.
|
|
He said it happened after Earth's temperature cooled, replacing some jungles with grasslands. According to Stanley, horses with shorter teeth that were fine for grinding softer leaves had trouble eating grass, which made them weak and caused them to eventually die out.
"It just makes sense that that's what happened," he said.
Both the Smith and Thompson medals are given every three years.
Keil said it was no single finding he made or a paper he wrote that got him the award, but a lifetime of research on gases, asteroids, stars and other planetary materials with the goal of "understanding where we came from."
"Just like the life of a human being, stars are born, they age and they die," said Keil, who is now 71. "And I'm trying to figure out, Did our solar system form the same way?"
Keil said little was known about space when he began his studies at the Friedrich-Schiller University in Germany at 22 years of age.
"I got into this field because I found it fascinating that there were rocks falling from the sky," he said.
Keil says he is also busy with an unexpected job: trying to find someone from whom he can borrow a tuxedo to attend the academy's award ceremony with his wife on April 23 in Washington, D.C.
"I don't own one," he said. "I couldn't show up in my Hawaiian shirt."