The New York Times recently had a long obituary about Sheldon Breiner. It was covered in the local Star Advertiser, but I did not read it. However, a resident here cut it out, gave it to me and wondered if I knew him.
Turns out he was a senior at Stanford University when I came in as a freshman. He stayed for degrees up to the PhD in oceanographic and geophysical surveying, finally graduating in 1967. I don't remember meeting him. He went on to become an intrepid explorer and serial entrepreneur, plus prolific photographer. Here, 3.192 photos just from 2005.
From Stanford Magazine in 1997:
He has found avalanche victims in Colorado, located a 400-year-old sunken Spanish ship off the California coast and pinpointed the world's largest diamond deposit in Australia. Sheldon Breiner even discovered the ancient Greek colony of Sybaris under layers of dirt and rubble. He loves a challenging search--and, using a device called a magnetometer, Breiner says he can find almost anything buried beneath the earth's surface.
To continue:
One of Breiner's most successful searches began in 1968 with a phone call from a Yale anthropology professor. Soon he was on his way to the steamy jungles of southern Mexico. Lugging his magnetometers on a six-hour boat ride and two-hour horseback excursion, Breiner arrived in San Lorenzo, where the ancient Olmec culture thrived more than 3,000 years ago. Working gingerly among iguanas, monkeys, parrots and poisonous snakes, Breiner turned up more than a hundred buried objects during three separate archeological seasons. The discoveries included some of the most important pre-Columbian art ever found, including a jaguar figure and a 10-ton head carved from basalt rock. (That's him above.) These two pieces were on display last year at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
He has spent most of his later years in Portola Valley, close to the San Andreas Fault, and was working on how magnetometers might be used to predict earthquakes. I can go on and on, but if you're interest in his other adventures:
- Magnetic Exploration of the Olmec Civilization
- His first company: Geometrics
- Part of his entrepreneural experiences
-
No comments:
Post a Comment