Laura Lee Weinzierl (née Lane; July 28, 1900 – September 28, 1928)[1] was an American petroleum geologist and micropaleontologist who worked in the Texas and Gulf Coast oil fields.
Lane was born in Louisville, Kentucky.[2] She graduated from San Antonio High School in 1917, and earned a bachelor's degree in geology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1923.[3] At university, she was a charter member of the Beta chapter of Chi Upsilon, a geology honor society for women.[4][5]
Lane worked for the Rio Bravo Oil Company for a summer during college. She was a micropaleontologist for Marland Oil Company. She studied Foraminifera to identify sites likely to contain oil and gas in the Texas and Gulf Coast regions.[6][7] She was a member of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, the Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists[8] and a charter member of the Houston Geological Society.[9] She presented her research at the American Association of Petroleum Geologists meeting in Houston in 1924.[10]
Lane married fellow geologist John Frederick Weinzierl in 1926. She died in 1928, in Houston, at the age of 28, from an asthma attack.[2] A collection of her papers and artifacts is in the natural history collection of Sam Houston State University.[6]