ABSTRACT
Beginning with Bill’s 1969 appointment to the Apollo Project’s six-person Lunar Sample Preliminary Examination Team – an association with NASA that, years later, led to the crucial contributions of Precambrian Paleobiology to the then-nascent field of Astrobiology – the 1970s were packed with adventure and success. His seeming misfortune of being trapped in the 1971 India–Pakistan War set the stage for a return visit in 1973, when he discovered the first Precambrian fossils of the Indian subcontinent. His repeated visits to the Soviet Union – most notably a six-month sojourn as a National Academies of Science Exchange scientist, when he was the only American “on the loose” during the height of the Cold War – resulted in the discovery of the first six Precambrian stromatolitic biotas recorded in the USSR and his friendship with famed Origin-of-Life scientist A.I. Oparin. In 1978, he was selected as a member of the first ten-person delegation of scientists to visit the People’s Republic of China, a visit that led to his later discovery of the first Precambrian stromatolitic biotas of China. And in 1977, he was selected as recipient of the US National Science Board’s A.T. Waterman Award as the “Outstanding Young Scientist” in the United States.
