Citation by Sierd Cloetingh
This year's recipient of GSA's International Distinguished Career Award is extraordinary and truly unique, both as a scientist and as a person. As a scientist, GSA Fellow Bilal Haq has been pursuing frontier research up to the present day, as exemplified by his most recent paper on sea level variations, with James Ogg, a major update on the topic of Cenozoic eustasy in the June issue 2024 issue of GSA Today. This is the latest in the body of work with unprecedented impact on Geosciences. As an illustration of that: his original landmark sea level paper, with his EPR colleagues, published in Science in 1987, has been cited well over 10,000 times, triggering not only advances in sedimentary geology in the broadest sense, but also inspired many other communities in solid Earth and climate research, including myself. His rare talent to synthesize vast amount of global data into a cohesive story is truly exceptional.
Meeting Bilal in person at the International Geological Congress in Oslo in the summer of 2008 was a great moment for me. The more as it occurred at a time when there was still an academic rift between the sedimentary geology and geodynamics communities on the causes and nature of past sea level change. Bilal was fully aware of our divergent views on this matter, but immediately accepted my invitation to give a short course on sea level change and sequence stratigraphy for PhD students in the Netherlands, which was sensational for all those attending. Since that time, an impressive convergence of views has been occurring between the sedimentary geology and geodynamics communities, as alluded to in our joint review paper published in Science in 2015.
Bilal has always been building bridges between different communities, overcoming barriers between academia and industry, geology and geophysics, ocean and terrestrial focused researchers. He has always been stimulating cross-fertilization between scientists, students and end-users of Earth science knowhow and expertise.
National and international community service and sharing his vast knowledge and wisdom is in his DNA. I know how deeply he was appreciated in the marine geosciences’ community as the director for marine geoscience programs at NSF. He has been serving, and is still doing so, on numerous international advisory boards. The more impressive is that he never faltered in being an active scientist, all the while pursuing curiosity-driven research with great gusto. International recognition such as an honorary doctorate and affiliate professorship at the Sorbonne University, his election to the prestigious Academia Europaea, the Academy of Europe, and more recently the award of France’s Prestwich Prize, illustrate his international recognition. At Sorbonne he has collaborated with his Paris colleagues in numerous seminal projects, including a breakthrough paper on the first empirical quantitative estimate of the total amount of salt sequestered in the deep Mediterranean’s Messinian evaporite giant, based on ocean-wide seismic data extracted from the industry.
Bilal has been a true ambassador for science and outreach to the public. One of his major contributions in this regard was the saving of a prolific fossil locality in Shandong province of China that was declared a National Geopark, and also being instrumental in the creation of another Geopark, populated with giant sculptures of Foraminifera in Zhongshan (Canton), both sites serving as outreach to the public, especially to the impressionable school-age children.
As a person, Bilal is unique as well. Generosity, great care and interest in people of different backgrounds, unselfish scientific collaboration and community service are characteristic of his personality. Bilal is a warm person, a deep thinker about the essence of life and the beauty of Nature as is so well expressed in his many poems: A sample of his verse (from his collection: Glimpses of Nature and Man) is appended here (with permission):
Musings
Like a black hole at the center of every bright galaxy
Swallowing photons and cosmic nuclei to await rebirth
Like tectonic shifts causing great terrestrial upheavals
But also necessary for exposing new lands
Like organic urge to multiply as well as to mutate
Crucial to evolve to a higher form
Like water flowing over a mighty fall dwarfing
Sounds of a babbling brook that’s music to the soul
Like body’s ability to feel pain as well as pleasure
Both vital for a healthy mind
Nature’s apparent contradictions are
Indeed, great gifts that make us whole
And yet the only comprehending creature
His awareness the very window to creation’s core
Refuses to celebrate his place in the splendid scheme
And acknowledge that his own fulfillment lies in
Being a part of Nature, and thus, be a part of God!
I congratulate Bilal for this so well-deserved honor and I commend GSA for choosing him as the recipient of their 2024 International Distinguished Career Award.
Response by Bilal U. Haq
It is indeed a pleasure for me to be here this evening and accept this honor from GSA’s International Division. Many thanks to my friends, Sierd Cloetingh and Christian Gorini, for their nominations and to the Geological Society for the recognition.
I have always thought of myself as a citizen of the World and thus, over my long career I have gone wherever geology beckoned, both out of personal scientific curiosity, as the US NSF’s director for marine geology and geophysics programs for almost three decades, and in the service of the international geoscience community.
A more significant contribution that I am truly proud of is the rescuing of a Miocene fossil site in Shandong, China, from the jaws of destruction by local brick makers, which was accomplished through an international appeal that was approved by the highest authorities in Beijing. This site is now a National Geopark and a Museum has built next to it which now houses all the fossils evacuated from this site gathered from collections all over China, now preserved for the geoscience research and posterity. Another effort that I take pride in was the creation (together with my friend, Academician, Zheng Shouyi) of a national park in Zhongshan, populated with giant sculptures of Foraminifera (shelled marine micro-organisms that are so important for biochronology and paleoclimatic-paleoceanographic research). This has been a boon for outreach to the public and for international eco- and evo-tourism.
I have also been lucky that many universities around the world opened their doors to me, where long and short sabbaticals allowed me to not only further by scientific curiosity but also more fully appreciate their cultures, art and music. These include my alma maters, the universities of the Punjab, Vienna and Stockholm, as well as such renowned centers of learning as universities of Copenhagen, Cambridge, Florence, Oxford, Paris and Shanghai, among others.
It has been an honor to work with, and sometimes even publish with, so many brilliant researchers, many of who have been at the cutting edge of their science. They have been a deep well of ideas that has sustained me. And my more than 50 years of association with GSA has indeed been an intellectually rewarding one.