Archives West Finding Aid

Robert Q. (Bob) Oaks, Jr. was born in 1938 in Houston Texas. His dad headed a seismic crew, so Bob grew up in the southwestern US oil patch. Bob worked summers for Gulf Oil Corporation, 1955-57, and for Transcontinental Gas Pipeline, 1958-60. He earned his BA in Geology at Rice University in 1960 and his PhD in Geology at Yale University in 1965, where he studied interglacial shorelines in Virginia. He apprenticed with Chuck Campbell as a Research Geologist with Jersey and then Exxon Production Research Company, 1964-1966. In 1966, he accepted a teaching position at Utah State University under J. Stewart Williams, then Department Head and Dean of the Graduate School. He consulted for Magellan Petroleum Corporation in Central Australia during 1979-1986, together with four of his graduate students. Bob retired from teaching in 1999, and thereafter became Professor Emeritus. He has remained active in research and in consulting for groundwater in the Cache Valley area.