Bill's Scripps/UCLA doctoral thesis (1954) under Phleger, was titled "The Ecology of Living Foraminifera, Todos Santos Bay, Baja California."
Generations of scientists have used this stain on samples taken from oceans around the world and successfully determined how deep in the sediment living foraminifera were burrowing.
Moving to Amoco Oil Company in 1957 he rose from paleoecologist to research director for geology and geochemistry, chief geologist and exploration manager for Latin America and the far east, retiring from that post in 1981.
From 1981 to 1985, Bill conducted independent research on foraminiferal ecology in his personal laboratory in Barnstable, Massachusetts, near Woods Hole where he long had had similarly interested associates.
He taught a Senior Linkage Seminar on "The Petroleum Industry: Its Success, Its Problems and Its Future" and continued his studies of foraminiferal ecology and the comparison of modern salinity-dependent phenotypes with those of the geological record.