George Hart was born in Yorkshire, England and educated at Sheffield University, England, and Moscow State University, Russia. He is Professor emeritus in Geology & Geophysics at Louisiana State University. He has extensive teaching, research, consulting and administrative credentials in the Earth Sciences that have spanned a professional career of over 50 years as a paleobiologist and geologist, with digressions into statistics, computer science and economics.
Professor Hart’s reputation as an internationally recognized scientist is backed by the fact that he has held many prestigious international Research Fellowships and Awards. This commenced when he was awarded a British Council Studentship to West Germany and Belgium [1959] and later became a British Council - Soviet Ministry of Education Fellow to the USSR [1960-61]. At that time he was the first western geologist allowed into the Soviet Union on a long term basis after Stalin’s death, and the first western Geologist to teach Field Methods at the Moscow State University Field Camp in the Crimea. During 1961-63 he held a NATO Fellowship to South Africa; followed by an Anglo-American Senior Fellowship at the Bernard Price Institute of Paleontology in Johannesburg. In 1973-74 he was the National Academy of Sciences of the USA Senior Fellow to the former Soviet Union and was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to India in 1983.
In addition to his work in Europe, the former Soviet Union, and South Africa, he undertook research for approximately 20 years in India where he initially went as a United Nations Consultant [1983-84] and later became affiliated with the American Institute of Indian Studies in New Delhi, sponsored by The Smithsonian Institution, USA.
As an educator Professor Hart taught graduate classes in nineteen different subjects and supervised Ph.D. students in Geology, Economics, Computer Science, Petroleum Engineering and Marine Sciences. He has lectured, taught or undertaken general geological field visits in Britain, Norway, Sweden, Finland, USSR, France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Yugoslavia, India, Nepal, Tibet, Australia, Botswana, Republic of South Africa, Swaziland, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique, Brazil, Guatemala, Mexico, Canada, and the USA. In addition, he has worked on material from Antarctica, Tanzania, China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Congo, South West Africa, and Pakistan.
Administratively George Hart progressed from Head of the Microstratigraphy Research Unit in the Bernard Price Institute of Paleontology, Johannesburg, South Africa, where he was the curator in Micropaleontology; to Professor and Director of the Museum of Geosciences at Louisiana State University; and finally Director of Research for the Louisiana Geological Survey.
Professor Hart is the author of over 100 publications and appeared on television and radio in both the USA and South Africa. He currently lives in the Front Range of the Colorado Rocky Mountains with his wife Clare.
