William W. Hay is a geologist, marine geologist, micropaleontologist, paleoceanographer, and paleoclimatologist, primarily associated with the University of Colorado.
Biography
William Winn Hay was born October 12, 1934, in Dallas, Texas, the second son of Stephen John and Avella Hay.
Academic Career
Hay received his B.S. in Biologyfrom Southern Methodist University in 1955, M.S. in Geology at the University of Illinois at Urbana in 1958, and Ph.D. in Geology at Stanford University in 1960. As an undergraduate and graduate student he also studied at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and the University of Zurich as a Fellow of the Swiss Friends of the USA. He began his academic career at the University of Illinois in Urbana in 1960. From 1968 to 1974 he was jointly Professor of Geology at the University of Illinois and Professor of Marine Geology and Geophysics at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences of the University of Miami before serving as Chairman of the Division of Marine Geology and Geophysics at RSMAS for 2 years, and Dean from 1976-1980. He was President of Joint Oceanographic Institutions, Inc., in Washington, D.C. from 1979 to 1982. In 1982, he became Director of the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Museum, and in 1983 became Professor in the Department of Geological Sciences and joined the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences. From 1990 to 1998, was Visiting Professor at GEOMAR, a marine geological research institute attached to Christian-Albrecht’s-Universität, Kiel, Germany. From 1991-96, Hay also held positions at the Institute for Baltic Sea Research in Warnemünde, Germany; University of Vienna’s Institut für Paläontologie; Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University’s Geologische Institut in Greifswald, Germany; and as L.C. Donders Professor at the Institute of Earth Sciences, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands. Retiring from the University of Colorado in 1998, he became Professor of Paleoceanology at GEOMAR, retiring in June 2002. Currently, he is Professor Emeritus of Geological Sciences at the University of Colorado, and lives in Estes Park, Colorado. Hay was advisor and mentor to approximately 40 graduate students during their Master’s and Doctoral studies, variously at the University of Illinois, University of Miami, Université de Paris,, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zürich, Louis Pasteur University, University of Colorado at Boulder, and Christian- Albrechts Universität, Kiel. His current research interests are in global paleoclimatic and paleoceanographic modeling and the global carbon cycle.
