Daniel Barker, the F.M. Bullard Professor of Geology, emeritus, at the University of Texas at Austin, died May 21, 2015, at age 81.
Barker graduated from Yale in 1956, earned a master’s degree in geology from Caltech in 1958, and then a Ph.D. in geology from Princeton in 1961. He went to the University of Texas at Austin in 1963, and retired in 1999.
He supervised seven doctoral students and 11 master’s students and demanded that each come up with his or her own original research topic and write a proposal that competed with him for his endowed-research funds. Barker published a textbook and more than 50 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters. His geological fieldwork took him around the world.
At UT, he received the Knebel Teaching Award three times and the College of Natural Sciences’ Teaching Excellence Award twice. He received the Jubilee Medal of the Geological Society of South Africa in 1994. Barker was a senior fellow of the Mineralogical Society of America, and received several research grants from the National Science Foundation.
Barker is survived by two daughters and two grandchildren. His marriage to Barbara Mackin lasted from 1964 to 1984, and they remained best of friends until she died in 2002. In 1994, he married Rosemary Brant, a happy union until her death in 2006.
Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.