Abraham Gottlob Werner Research Collection Dedicated

(continued from What's New)

The Abraham Gottlob Werner Research Collection was dedicated in a ceremony in the OU History of Science Collections on September 1, 1999.

Dr. Ospovat, Professor Emeritus of History at Oklahoma State University, donated to OU the bulk of the research materials he has accumulated during a lifetime of scholarly study on Werner and Wernerian geology, beginning with his research for both his M.A. thesis (1958) and doctoral dissertation.  The research collection includes not only printed materials, but a large quantity of photocopies of otherwise unique manuscript materials -- correspondence, lecture notes, and the like -- held in the collections of the Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg, where Werner gained fame as a teacher and founding figure of the then-new science of geology. Establishment of the Werner Collection in the OU History of Science Collections, thus locating at OU perhaps the greatest concentration of original Werner materials outside Freiberg, occurs with the agreement of the TU Bergakademie Freiberg Rektor, Ernst Schlegel. 

The dedication ceremony, attended by a gathering of OU students, faculty, and administrators, and other friends and members of Dr. Ospovat's family, was presided over by Dr. Marilyn B. Ogilvie, Curator of the History of Science Collections.  In addition to comments by Dr. Ogilvie, remarks were offered by Dean Paul B. Bell of the College of Arts and Sciences, Dean Sul H. Lee of University Libraries, and Professor Kenneth L. Taylor of the OU History of Science Department.

In the highlight of the ceremony, Alex Ospovat reminisced about how he came to choose A.G. Werner as a focus of his research (initially at the suggestion of Duane H.D. Roller, the first OU faculty member in History of Science and founding Curator of the Collections), about some of his adventures in Werner scholarship, and about changed perceptions of Werner's place in geology's development. 

Alex Ospovat is internationally recognized as a leading historian of geology, and especially as a pioneering researcher concerning Werner's role in early geology.  Perhaps more than any other scholar, Ospovat, through his research and publications, has overturned the tendency in Anglo-American historiography to portray Werner -- leader of the 'Neptunist' school and thus in many respects an antagonist to the 'Plutonist' school of the Scot James Hutton -- as a retrograde influence in geology's historical development.  Most historians of science now agree, thanks in considerable degree to Ospovat's scholarship, on Werner's central role in establishing descriptive petrography and sequence stratigraphy as major parts of the geological enterprise toward the end of Werner's lifetime. 

Alexander Ospovat's distinctions include fellowships bestowed by the Fulbright Commission and the American Council of Learned Societies, the award of the Werner Medal by the Geological Society of East Germany, and an honorary doctorate conferred by the TU Bergakademie Freiberg. In 1960, he received the first doctorate in the history of science to be awarded by the University of Oklahoma.

A catalogue of the A.G. Werner Research Collections' contents has been prepared by J. Whitecotton, of the OU History of Science Collections. 


Return to What's New