Background
Shepard, Francis Parker was born on May 10, 1897 in Brookline, Massachusetts, United States. Son of Thomas Hill and Edna (Parker) Shepard.
Shepard, Francis Parker was born on May 10, 1897 in Brookline, Massachusetts, United States. Son of Thomas Hill and Edna (Parker) Shepard.
He studied geology under R. A. Daly at Harvard University, a period that was interrupted by service in the United States Navy during the First World War. After meeting his future wife, Elizabeth Buchner, he chose to study for his doctorate at the University of Chicago, close to her Milwaukee home.
There he worked alongside J. Harlan Bretz, Rollin Doctorate. Salisbury and Rollin T. Chamberlin (son of Thomas Chamberlin) on the structural geology of the Rocky Mountains, receiving his degree in 1922. A fortuitous spell using a yacht belonging to his father, the head of Shepard Steamship Lincolnshire, turned Shepard in the direction of marine geology. Examining the distribution of sediments on the New England shelf, he found evidence of the role of sea level change in the evolution of shelves.
After a sabbatical in 1933 spent studying submarine canyons off the coast of California, Shepard took leave from Chicago and moved his family and two of his graduate students, Robert South. Dietz and Kenneth O. Emery, to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in Louisiana Jolla.
There his work focused on the shelves off California and the Gulf of California, and the processes that shaped them. Submarine canyons, he suggested, were initially carved by rivers when sea levels were lower during the recent Pleistocene epoch.
In the Second World War, Shepard again worked for the United States Navy, where his expertise and knowledge of seafloors was used to assist submarine operations. After the war, Shepard became director of an American Petroleum Institute project, studying sedimentation in the northern Gulf of Mexico between 1951 and 1960 (API Project 51).
Although officially retiring in 1966, Shepard continued to work, even after illness had forced him to remain at home.
Member Geological Society American, International Association Sedimentologists (president 1958-1963, councilor, editor Sedimentology 1963). Society Economics Palcontologists and Mineralogists (honorary), Sigma Xi. Gamma Alpha, Alpha Sigma Phi.
Married Elizabeth Buchner, June 12, 1920. Children: Thomas Hill II, Anthony Lee.