The Life and Times of Adriaen Block: Dutch Explorer, Mapmaker, and Fur Trader

Join us for a presentation by geologist and environmental scientist Dr. Johan Varekemp, professor emeritus at Wesleyan University.  Learn about the influence of Dutch explorers in the Connecticut River Valley through the life of Adriaen Block and the environmental impacts of the fur trade.  

About the Presenter:  Dr. Johan C. Varekamp is the Harold T. Stearns Professor of Earth Science emeritus and the current mineralogy curator of the Joe Webb Peoples Museum of Natural History at Wesleyan University, Middletown CT. He served as resident director of the Wesleyan Program in Bologna, Italy, and spent sabbaticals at Cambridge and Bristol University, UK, Pisa, Italy and Kyoto, Japan. He authored ~80 publications on environmental geochemistry and volcanology, including two chapters dealing with mercury pollution and water quality in the Long Island Sound (LIS) monograph, ‘The Urban Sea’. He is past president of the ‘Limnogeology Division’ and the ‘Geology and Public Policy Committee’ of the Geological Society of America, and served for decades on the EPA-STAC for LIS. He served on the Board of Directors of the CT Agricultural Research Station, and on the Science Advisory Board of the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, CT. He is a past Board Chair of Save the Sound, and recently joined the Education Committee of the Connecticut River Museum in Essex, CT.  He has provided outreach to civic and religious groups on climate change, sea level rise, and mercury pollution. Since his recent retirement, he resides with his wife Dr. Ellen Thomas, a paleoclimatologist at Yale University, near the Connecticut River.  They walk their giant Estrela dog at the Gillette Castle grounds, work on their ancient home and older British sports car, and Joop tries to revamp his classic guitar skills of many years past.