Roger Lyman Batten

Roger L. Batten has passed away

June 22, 1923 - June 10, 2023

Private Interment: Miramar National Cemetery 5795 Nobel Dr. San Diego, CA 92122

His mother Mae Batten said it was a sunny day in Hammond, Indiana, on the day when Roger was born. Growing up in Chicago was carefree, spending his summers in Pound, Wisconsin, with his grandparents.

Corporal Roger L. Batten was a prisoner of war in Nazi Germany his unit having been captured during the Battle of the Bulge. We visited Germany many years later and at the train station he saw a train going to the town of Luckenvald ad told me that's where is prison camp was. At dinner I asked him how he felt about seeing that train and being in Germany after being a prisoner there, and his response - "well they make love".

- After service in the war; Roger received his Bachelor's at the University of Wyoming and earned his PhD at Columbia University. He worked first as a professor at the University of Wisconsin and later in the 1960's-1980's as a curator the AMNH and professor at Columbia University. Roger was a specialist on Paleozoic gastropods, making use of the then newly minted instrument, the Scanning Electron Microscope (in fact, he wrote he grant to obtain the original instrument at the museum). Working with students and colleagues, Roger pursued field work in England, China, and the U.S. Southwest, focusing on the mass extinction at the end of the Permian and the recovery in the early Triassic. Among his most cited publications are the textbook "The Evolution of the Earth" with Robert Dott, one of the first geology textbooks to incorporate plate tectonics in its discussion, and the volume on Paleozoic Gastropods in the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology.

Dr. Neil H. Landman, Curator Emeritus,

Department of Invertebrate Paleontology,

American Museum of Natural History, New York, New York

- My name is William Ligo, Roger's husband. I met Roger at a gay mens' discussion in Greenwich Village New York City, and on that fateful day in the summer of 1983 - we started talking and 42 years later here we are. I was very impressed that Roger could play all 32 of the Beethoven Sonatas, which he did starting with the 1st Sonata and playing through each day to Sonata No 32 and beginning again and Sonata No 1. We loved to cruise and took three (3) World Cruises of 136 days each on the Holland America cruise ships. Each time we disembarked, we always said I could do it all over again. We enjoyed that partly because of my having worked for an airline (in reservations) which qualified us for deep discounts on travel.

We have scheduled a 72 day cruise to circumnavigate the Continent of Africa for October 10, 2023 - and I plan to go on that cruise carrying Roger and all of our memories with me. I have booked passage on the continuation of that ship to the Panama Canal. I'll get back home on January 3, 2024. We always liked being home for Christmas, but this time I'll pass on that. We love you Roger L. Batten.