William Ostrander
 | |
| Latest company | Standard Oil Company of California |
|---|---|
| Membership | SEG |
| BSc | Geological Science |
| MSc | Geophysics |
| MSc university | Penn State |
Contents
Biography Citation for the Virgil Kauffman Gold Medal Award
Contributed by Paul Diamond
This year the Virgil Kauffman Gold Medal of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists has been awarded to a very deserving geophysicist, William J. "Bill" Ostrander. It is both an honor and a privilege to write this citation for him in recognition of his outstanding accomplishment in the development of angle dependent reflectivity as an exploration method, commonly referred to as the "Ostrander Method."
Education
Bill has had a very broad geophysical background. He received his B.S. degree in geological science in 1965, and after receiving his M.S. degree in geophysics at Penn State, he joined the Standard Oil Company of California (Chevron), where he continues to be an outstanding technical geophysicist.
Career
Throughout his career Bill has been able to apply his technical abilities and develop many new geophysical programs and methods to aid geophysicists in their search for energy. Bill developed the angle dependent reflectivity method for the proprietary use of his employer who consented to the release of the method to the geophysics industry.
During his years with Chevron, Bill has been in exploration geophysics, research geophysics, and data processing. He has several patents to his credit, issued or pending, and others which he has co-authored with other Chevron geophysicists. In 1981, Bill received his patent for his Detection of Gas With Angle Dependent Method.
Attributes
Bill's strongest attribute, is that he has the unique ability to take anything highly technical and put it to simple and practical use. He has utilized this unique ability and has devoted a lot of time to the teaching and training of other earth scientists. For the past six years, Bill has taught a course in reflection seismology at Stanford University and also participated as a guest lecturer at several universities. For the past two years, Bill has been one of the lecturers for the SEG short course on seismic lithology, along with Mike Graul and Fred Hilterman.
Bill Ostrander is certainly an outstanding geophysicist and a person with the highest professional integrity. He is a real credit to the profession and I am sure he will make many more contributions to the science of geophysics.
