Frederick Arthur Donath (born 1931) is an American geologist who specialized in research on nuclear waste disposal. He was the founding editor of the ''

Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences ''Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences'' is an annual peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Annual Reviews, which broadly covers Earth and planetary sciences, including geology, atmospheric sciences, climate, geophysics, env ...

''.

Early life and education

Frederick Arthur Donath was born to Arthur C. Donath and Elizabeth in 1931 at

St. Cloud Hospital St. Cloud Hospital is a hospital in St. Cloud, Minnesota, United States. It is a Catholic-affiliated, not-for-profit institution and part of the CentraCare Health System. The hospital has more than 9,000 employees, 400 physicians and 1,200 volu ...

St. Cloud, Minnesota St. Cloud is a city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and the largest population center in the state's central region. The population was 68,881 at the 2020 census, making it Minnesota's 12th-largest city. St. Cloud is the county seat of Stear ...

. Arthur Donath was an educator and a principal. Fred Donath grew up in Winona, Minnesota, attending Winona Senior High School where he participated in the

Civil Air Patrol Civil Air Patrol (CAP) is a congressionally chartered, federally supported non-profit corporation that serves as the official civilian auxiliary of the United States Air Force (USAF). CAP is a volunteer organization with an aviation-minded mem ...

(CAP) and traveled to Switzerland for ten days as part of a cadet exchange. He moved to Texas to attend Rice University, though returned to Minnesota to finish his undergraduate at the University of Minnesota in 1954. He then attended

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

for his Master of Science in 1956 and PhD in 1958.

Career

After graduating from Stanford, he worked at San Jose State University as an assistant professor of geology. In 1958 he accepted a position as an assistant professor of geology with an emphasis in

structural geology Structural geology is the study of the three-dimensional distribution of rock units with respect to their deformational histories. The primary goal of structural geology is to use measurements of present-day rock geometries to uncover informatio ...

at Columbia University to fill the vacancy left by the retirement of Walter Hermann Bucher. In 1962, Donath received a research grant from the National Science Foundation to establish a geophysics lab at Columbia University; he was also promoted to associate professor. He left Columbia later in the 1960s to accept a position as head of the Department of Geology at the University of Illinois; he was head of the department for eleven years until 1977, after which he remained a professor of geology. In 1978 he testified before the US Congress regarding geologic considerations in radioactive waste. He was the founding editor of the ''

'', which was established in 1973. He was succeeded as editor by

George Wetherill George Wetherill (August 12, 1925 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – July 19, 2006 Washington, DC) was a physicist and geologist and the Director Emeritus of the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, DC, USA. ...

in 1981. In 1980, he left the University of Illinois to form his own consulting firm, CGS Inc. Later in the 1980s, he sold CGS to a California-based company, Earthtec, and started working for them as vice president for research. He then created an endowed award for young scientists with the Geological Society of America known as the Donath Medal.

Personal life

Donath married Mavis in 1952.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Donath, Fred A Living people 1931 births People from St. Cloud, Minnesota University of Minnesota alumni Stanford University alumni Rice University alumni San Jose State University faculty Columbia University faculty University of Illinois faculty People from Winona, Minnesota Annual Reviews (publisher) editors