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Ronald Keith Sorem was born in 1924. He received his B.A. in Geology in 1946 and his M.S. in 1948 from the University of Minnesota. In 1952 he began working for the U.S. Geological Service as a geologist and finished his Ph.D. in Wisconsin in 1958. He was hired in 1959 by Washington State University in the Geology Department and in 1980 became the Division of Sciences half-time Associate Dean. Sorem taught graduate courses in Ore Microscopy and X-ray analysis in addition to his own research, which focused primarily on the study of the mineralogy of marine manganese nodules. However after the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens, Sorem became a regional "ash specialist." Interested in scientific and medical information about the ash, the WSU Council of Deans requested on May 20, 1980 the formation of the WSU Volcanic Ash Study Committee, on which Sorem served as the panel geologist. The conclusions reached by this committee were presented in an hour-long local public television program aired on May 23.

Sorem proposed a continuation of this committee for a more systematic study of volcanic ash. The committee created was named BASHCOM-WSU (Bustad Ash Study and Health Committee, Washington State University). Soon after studies began, a controversy arose over varying laboratory calculations of the level of crystalline silica, which if inhaled frequently could cause the respiratory disease, silicosis, existent in the Mt. St. Helens ash. Sorem and Washington State University became well-known in the scientific community for their "free-silica" stance on the issue, claiming very minimal and unharmful levels of silica in the ash, which directly challenged the much higher silica findings by the NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health). This dispute was presented in Analytic Chemistry in September and October 1980 and again in March 1986 in the American Journal of Public Health, following an attempt to solve the scientific discrepancies. Sorem was one of the leading spokespersons and researchers on the silica issue and also published his own conclusions on the physical structure of the Mt St. Helens ash, known as ash clusters, as well as the effects on the Pullman, WA area. He presented this information to several conferences held at WSU, the Committee Technical Conference in Nov. 1980 sponsored by FEMA and NSF in Washington D.C., and to the International Geological Congress in Paris. In 1982 his article "Volcanic Ash Cluster: Tephra Rafts and Scavengers" was published in the Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research.