“It's my view that we won't know where the most interesting places are until we've seen all of them.”
William Maurice Ewing (1906–74)
Earth Scientist
Faculty 1944–72
Ewing’s quest to solve the puzzles of the Earth’s ocean basins led him to invent or perfect instruments and methods for exploring the ocean floors. He pioneered the use of shock waves for underwater monitoring of vessels and marine life. He collaborated with students at Columbia’s Lamont Geological Observatory to develop seismographs that were used to establish the first global earthquake monitoring network consisting of calibrated uniform instrumentation. Relentless in his explorations of the structures underlying the ocean bottoms, he helped lay the foundations for the establishment of plate tectonics as the explanation of the evolution of the Earth’s crust.
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