Lincoln Hollister
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I have spent most of my career reading rocks in order to understand the stories of how mountain belts are made http://geoweb.princeton.edu/people/faculty/ hollister). New techniques to read rocks continue to be developed, and new rocks to read continue to be found. In recent years I have focused on the Coast Mountains of British Columbia and Alaska, where I have done fieldwork since 1963, and on the Himalayas of Bhutan, where I first went in 1987.

Between 1993 and 2000, I was the lead principal investigator of a multidisciplinary study of the Coast Mountains that involved 10 investigators at 9 universities in Canada and USA (http://geoweb. princeton.edu/research/ACCRETE/accrete.html). As a consequence of the multidisciplinary nature of the projects in British Columbia and Bhutan, we have developed new insights into how continental crust is made. The multidisciplinary collaboration has ranged from braving the elements (storms, cliffs, rivers, glaciers, bears, wolves, tigers) in order to discover the rocks that posed important questions to using the most advanced analytical techniques to answer the questions, including the use of sound waves to image rock layers tens of miles below the surface.

I bring an observational approach to my classes at Princeton, where my typical course includes a week of exercises at a place (usually in the southwest) where one can clearly see the rocks. My involvement in Quark Park is an outgrowth from observing rocks in their natural settings and using observation as a basis for teaching and formulating questions. My friend for 46 years and collaborator, Alan Goodheart, is using his artistic skills to place rocks in a metaphoric setting where one can read and learn about the stories of their origins.

I received my Ph.D. in Geology and Geochemistry from Caltech, and I have been on the faculty of Princeton University since 1968. During my first years at Princeton I worked on learning the story of the moon from the returned lunar rocks.  Some may remember the line of people that stretched from Palmer Square to Guyot Hall, waiting for a glimpse of them. I continue as a principal investigator of a new multidisciplinary project in coastal British Columbia.  

Lincoln Hollister, Professor of Geology
Department of Geosciences
411 Guyot Hall, Princeton University
Princeton NJ 08544
609-258-4106 tel
609-258-1274 fax
linc@princeton.edu