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Duwayne Anderson, former dean of FNSM
Duwayne M. Anderson, a soil scientist and dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics from 1978-84, died Oct. 4 in his home in Hamilton, Wash. He was 75.
Anderson was widely recognized as one of the nation's foremost arctic geologists. Before joining the UB faculty, he was chief earth scientist with the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Lyme, N.H., where he directed studies of engineering and construction in arctic regions. He also served as director of polar programs for the National Science Foundation.
During this time, he also was a member of the team working on NASA's Viking Mission to Mars, the primary goal of which was to obtain high-resolution images of the Martian surface, characterize the structure and composition of the atmosphere and surface, and search for evidence of life. Anderson assisted with the Viking Lander's measurements of soil chemistry on the planet.
Anderson left UB in 1984 to become professor of geology and associate provost for research at Texas A&M University. During his tenure there, he developed scanning technologies resulting in state-of-the-art, high-resolution techniques for mapping large sea-floor surfaces. These images now confirm much of what is known regarding tectonic-plate theory, the movements of continents, the formation of the earth's surface and climate change on a geologic time scale.