Lewis Austin Weeks was born on the island of Curacao, March 25, 1925, the only child of Lewis G. and Una Austin Weeks.
At age two weeks he went to Venezuela to live, and later to Argentina and Brazil. In 1933 he was sent to the Beacon Prep School in Sussex, England, where he lived until 1939 when he went to live in Scarsdale, N.Y. He graduated from Scarsdale High School in 1942.
Austin graduated from Brown University in an accelerated program that put him through college in two years and eight months with a pre-med degree and an ensign’s commission in the U.S. Naval Reserves. Following this he spent three months at Navy Communications School at Harvard University.
During the war, his overseas duty took him first to the Mediterranean theatre, followed later by the Japanese occupation. Here he served on General Douglas MacArthur’s Army-Navy communications staff in Tokyo (1945-46).
He did some post-graduate study at Brown University, then went to the University of Wisconsin, where he earned a master’s in industrial bacteriology (1947-49). During summers he worked for the Sinclair Wyoming Oil Co. in Casper as a geological assistant and researcher on magnetic properties of granites and arkoses.
In 1950, he received his master’s in geology from Columbia University, his thesis being in structural geology.
From 1950-52, he lived in Salt Lake City and worked as a field geologist for the General Petroleum Corp. He married Marta Sutton in August 1951, and they moved to Durango, Colo., where Austin was field geologist for G.P.
He became a district geologist in 1953, and until 1957 did field and research work in Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada. Transferred to California in 1957, he did geological research at General Petroleum headquarters until 1960, when the company was reorganized and, along with many others, he was laid off.
Austin spent several years in real estate sales and investment before going back to work as a geological oceanographer for the Department of Commerce in Washington, D.C., as well as the Lamont Geological Observatory.
For the former, he was chief scientist for expeditions to the Andaman Islands for the International Indian Ocean Expedition in 1964, and also worked as a biologist for Columbia University, studying plankton in the Antarctic in 1963. He consulted for the Israeli government with his father, L.G. Weeks, in 1963 and also was involved in other trips to the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean and the Pacific.
In 1970-75, he started and was president of Weeks-Tator Consultants in Miami, Fla., and in 1970-84 was involved as a vice president and director of Weeks Petroleum Ltd., a Bermuda Corporation. When this company was raided on the London stock exchange in 1984, he retired.
After that he was involved in volunteer photography in the Miami area, producing an annual calendar. He also was involved in funding support for the University of Miami, the University of Wyoming, AAPG, the Miami Metrozoo and SPE.
Weeks died in February 2005 in Florida.