Robert Thorson is a professor and interim Head of geosciences at the University of Connecticut. Thor graduated from college in 1973 and left for Alaska to train as an exploration geologist. After earning an MS degree from the University of Alaska in 1975, he worked as a full-time geologist for the U.S. Geological Survey until 1979. He earned a PhD from the University of Washington in 1979, and in 1984, moved to New England to join the faculty of the University of Connecticut in the Department of Geology & Geophysics. During his first twenty years at UConn, his appointment was with the Department of Geology & Geophysics, where he ran a grant-funded research lab with graduate students, and where his undergraduate teaching responsibilities included glacial geology, surface processes, dinosaurs, and introductory geology.
Thor’s academic career took an unexpected turn in 2002 with the publication of his first book on signature landforms: Stone by Stone: The Magnificent History in New England’s Stone Walls. This nonfiction bestseller won the Connecticut Book Award. In addition to writing books, Thor has contributed many newspaper articles on science policy, environment, and education. His third book on stone walls, Exploring Stone Walls published in 2005, was the first-ever field guide to the phenomenon. Additionally, he has published two scholarly books on Henry David Thoreau for Harvard University Press. His last book, The Guide to Walden Pond, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2018, is the first guide to this international shrine, a place visited more than half a million times each year.
Arranged by Bryan Hooper
Bryan’s notes on the talk:
Professor Robert Thorson spoke about a subject he has studied and written about for many years, the stone walls of New England. Gary Banks found his book, “Stone by Stone,” on the Amazon website, and the notes accompanying it are reproduced below since they cover the essence of the talk given to us by Thor:
“There once may have been 250,000 miles of stone walls in America’s Northeast, stretching farther than the distance to the moon. They took three billion man-hours to build. And, even though most are crumbling today, they contain a magnificent scientific and cultural story―about the geothermal forces that formed their stones, the tectonic movements that brought them to the surface, the glacial tide that broke them apart, the earth that held them for so long, and about the humans who built them.
Stone walls tell nothing less than the story of how New England was formed, and in Robert Thorson’s hands they live and breathe. “The stone wall is the key that links the natural history and human history of New England,” Thorson writes. Millions of years ago, New England’s stones belonged to ancient mountains thrust up by prehistoric collisions between continents. During the Ice Age, pieces were cleaved off by glaciers and deposited―often hundreds of miles away―when the glaciers melted. Buried again over centuries by forest and soil buildup, the stones gradually worked their way back to the surface, only to become impediments to the farmers cultivating the land in the eighteenth century, who piled them into “linear landfills,” a place to hold the stones. Usually, the biggest investment on a farm, often exceeding that of the land and buildings combined, stone walls became a defining element of the Northeast’s landscape, and a symbol of the shift to an agricultural economy.
Stone walls layer time like Russian dolls, their smallest elements reflecting the longest spans, and Thorson urges us to study them, for each stone has its own story. Linking geological history to the early American experience, Stone by Stone presents a fascinating picture of the land the Pilgrims settled, allowing us to see and understand it with new eyes.”
The recording of Professor Thorson’s talk can be found at: https://youtu.be/KKpODRT5pTg.