Nathaniel Putzig

Than Putzig got an early start in the working world at the age of 14, when he took a job as a farm hand at a neighboring dairy farm in Knox, New York. The job didn’t last long, as times were tough and the farmer soon began enlisting his own children to replace paid workers. Than moved on to doing groundskeeping for another neighbor and then at the age of 16, he took a job as a kitchen assistant and janitor at a local restaurant, the Restseekers Inn in East Berne, New York. After his second summer of working at the restaurant subsequent to graduating from the Berne-Knox-Westerlo High School in 1982, he moved to Golden, Colorado to attend the Colorado School of Mines (CSM).

After his first year at CSM, Than returned home to New York for the summer to work as a landscaper and painter at the Pacific Molasses Company’s facilities at the Port of Albany. Back at CSM in the fall, Than continued his studies, intending to pursue a degree in Chemical Engineering. However, he realized by the spring semester that chemistry wasn’t the career for him, so he switched over to Geophysics after completing his sophomore year. Meanwhile, he took on a part-time job in the Chemical Engineering department’s shop, constructing laboratory equipment for the remainder of his time at CSM. During the summer between his junior and senior years, Than participated in a six-week Geophysics field camp held in and around South Fork, Colorado, after which he went to Houston, Texas for the summer, first working as a waiter at a Pizza Hut and then as a field hand for a geophysical survey (using electrical methods) being conducted over a gravel pit near Dallas, Texas by the consulting firm Harding Lawson Associates (HLA).

Upon graduating from CSM in 1986, Than moved to Houston, Texas, where he returned to HLA as a laboratory and field technician for the summer prior to beginning a Masters program in Geophysics at Rice University. That fall, he participated in the collection of a wide-angle combined reflection-refraction survey in central California, and his Masters work consisted of carrying out the refraction analysis for that data set. The results pointed to the existence of an imbricated lower crust, consisting of Pacific tectonic plate material beneath Farallon plate material.

Upon completing his Masters at Rice in 1988, Than resisted his advisor’s efforts to keep him around for a PhD and instead took on a job as an Exploration Geophysicist with Shell Oil Company, where he worked for five years. The first three years were with Shell Western Exploration and Production, Inc. (their U.S. domestic arm), where he participated in the design and processing of active-source seismic surveys for plays in the Michigan Basin and in the Delaware Basin of west Texas and New Mexico. For the last two of those years, Than worked for Pecten, the international arm of Shell U.S., developing processing methods for seismic data acquired in Yemen and Colombia.

The 1980s and 1990s were especially turbulent times in the oil and gas industry. In 1993, Shell decided to outsource nearly all of its seismic data acquisition and processing efforts, whereupon Than found himself seeking work elsewhere. He soon found it as the first employee with a software company called Photon Systems Inc., a new U.S. venture of the Canadian company Photon Systems Ltd. that specialized in seismic data analysis tools. As the Photon Houston office grew, Than became the Manager of Customer Support, overseeing several others in the provision of software and hardware installation, support, and training services. After management’s failed attempt to take the company public, Photon was sold off to an older seismic software company, CogniSeis, Inc., whereupon Than became the Manager of Customer Support for the larger company, headquartered in Houston. It was a difficult year for CogniSeis, with multiple turnovers in leadership that ended with a layoff of nearly all staff who had come in with Photon. Within a year or so, CogniSeis itself was bought out by yet another company, but Than had moved on.

In 1996, Than hung out a shingle as a consultant under the business name “Geomancer”, with the tag-line “Divining futures by signs from the Earth” and offering geophysical software and exploration services to the oil and gas industry. Over the subsequent four years, Than provided consulting services to more than twenty clients, but three of them — PetroCorp, JN Oil and Gas, and Broughton Operating Company — represented the lion’s share of his work, which was a mix of seismic data processing, seismic data analysis, and seismic software support. During what was to be his last year as a consultant, each of these companies was sold or closed down.

All along, Than held some misgivings with working in the industry, and at this point he became fully disenchanted with it, so he started to consider alternative career paths. Settling on planetary science, he soon realized that a return to graduate school was in order and he began the process of applying to various programs. Toward the end of this process, he was convinced by a friend to take a gap year, so he closed out the millennium by traveling around the world from August 2000 to August 2001. Upon returning to the U.S., he moved to Boulder, Colorado to pursue a PhD in Geophysics at the University of Colorado (CU), focusing on planetary science. Fortuitously, an opportunity arose during his travels, so he began his dissertation research on the thermal inertia of Mars immediately upon arrival as an employee of CU’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.

In the fall of 2005 when Than was entering his final year at CU, Roger Phillips took a sabbatical from Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) to work with Than’s advisor, Michael Mellon, at CU. Roger presented plans for the Shallow Radar (SHARAD) sounder onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which had recently launched on its way to Mars. Recognizing the overlap in the processing and analysis of radar and seismic data, Than successfully pitched the idea of his taking on a post-doc with Roger upon completing his PhD. Thus, in the fall of 2006, when MRO began its science phase, Than moved to St. Louis and joined the SHARAD team. He help Roger and other team members build up tools for processing and analysis of the radar data, initially at WUSTL and then from 2007 at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) back in Boulder, Colorado. After several years of SHARAD data acquisition, Than reached out to Fritz Foss, a friend and colleague from his industry days, to help with the more complex task of creating three-dimensional radar images of the Martian polar caps from data collected on thousands of orbital passes.

When Roger stepped down from his role as the U.S. and Deputy Team Leader (DTL) for SHARAD in 2015, he recommended that Than replace him, and NASA concurred. Fiscal constraints prompted Than to move on from SwRI in 2016, when he joined the Planetary Science Institute (PSI) and established their satellite office in Lakewood, Colorado. Than remains in his SHARAD DTL role while also continuing his thermophysical research and pursuing other interests. The PSI Colorado office grew in recent years, prompting a move to a new location (still within Lakewood) in 2023, at which time Than was also asked to take on a broader role at PSI as the Associate Director.