Harry Hammond Hess

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Harry Hammond Hess

Harry Hess commanding the USS Cape Johnson.

May 24, 1906
New York City
August 25, 1969 (age 63)
Died
Woods Hole, Massachusetts
Nationality
United States
Fields
Geology
Alma mater
Princeton University
Doctoral advisor Arthur Francis Buddington
Born

Doctoral students
Influences
Notable awards

John Tuzo Wilson[1]

Ronald Oxburgh
F. A. Vening-Meinesz[2]
Penrose Medal (1966)

Harry Hammond Hess (May 24, 1906 August 25, 1969) was a geologist and United States
Navy officer in World War II.
Considered one of the "founding fathers" of the unifying theory of plate tectonics, Rear Admiral
Harry Hammond Hess was born on May 24, 1906 in New York City. He is best known for his
theories on sea floor spreading, specifically work on relationships between island arcs, seafloor
gravity anomalies, and serpentinized peridotite, suggesting that the convection of the Earth's
mantle was the driving force behind this process. This work provided a conceptual base for the
development of the theory of plate tectonics.

Contents

1 Teaching career

2 The Navy-Princeton gravity expedition to the West Indies in 1932

3 Military career

4 Scientific discoveries

5 Death

6 Selected publications

7 References

8 External links

Teaching career
Harry Hess taught for a year (19321933) at Rutgers University in New Jersey and spent a year
as a research associate at the Geophysical Laboratory of Washington, D. C., before joining the
faculty of Princeton University in 1934. Hess remained at Princeton for the rest of his career and
served as Geology Department Chair from 1950 to 1966. He was a visiting professor at the
University of Cape Town, South Africa (19491950), and the University of Cambridge, England
(1965).

The Navy-Princeton gravity expedition to the West Indies in

1932
Hess accompanied Dr. Felix Vening Meinesz of Utrecht University on board the US Navy
submarine USS S-48 to assist with the second U.S. expedition to obtain gravity measurements at
sea. The expedition used a gravimeter, or gravity meter, designed by Meinesz.[3] The submarine
traveled a route from Guantanamo, Cuba to Key West, Florida and return to Guantanamo
through the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos region from 5 February through 25 March 1932. The
description of operations and results of the expedition were published by the U.S. Navy
Hydrographic Office in The Navy-Princeton gravity expedition to the West Indies in 1932.[4]

Military career
Hess joined the United States Navy during World War II, becoming captain of the USS Cape
Johnson, an attack transport ship equipped with a new technology: sonar. This command would
later prove to be key in Hess's development of his theory of sea floor spreading. Hess carefully
tracked his travel routes to Pacific Ocean landings on the Marianas, Philippines, and Iwo Jima,
continuously using his ship's echo sounder. This unplanned wartime scientific surveying enabled
Hess to collect ocean floor profiles across the North Pacific Ocean, resulting in the discovery of
flat-topped submarine volcanoes, which he termed guyots, after the nineteenth century

geographer Arnold Henry Guyot. After the war, he remained in the Naval Reserve, rising to the
rank of rear admiral.

Scientific discoveries
In 1960, Hess made his single most important contribution, which is regarded as part of the
major advance in geologic science of the 20th century. In a widely circulated report to the Office
of Naval Research, he advanced the theory, now generally accepted, that the Earth's crust moved
laterally away from long, volcanically active oceanic ridges. He only understood his ocean floor
profiles across the North Pacific Ocean after Marie Tharp and Bruce Heezen (1953, Lamont
Group) discovered the Great Global Rift, running along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.[5][6] Seafloor
spreading, as the process was later named, helped establish Alfred Wegener's earlier (but
generally dismissed at the time) concept of continental drift as scientifically respectable. This
triggered a revolution in the earth sciences.[7] Hess's report was formally published in his History
of Ocean Basins (1962),[8] which for a time was the single most referenced work in solid-earth
geophysics. Hess was also involved in many other scientific endeavours, including the Mohole
project (19571966), an investigation onto the feasibility and techniques of deep sea drilling.

Death
Hess died from a heart attack in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, on August 25, 1969, while chairing
a meeting of the Space Science Board of the National Academy of Sciences. He was buried in
the Arlington National Cemetery and was posthumously awarded the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration's Distinguished Public Service Award.
The American Geophysical Union established the Harry H. Hess medal in his memory in 1984
to "honor outstanding achievements in research of the constitution and evolution of Earth and
sister planets."[9]

Selected publications

Hess, H.H. (1946). "Drowned ancient islands of the Pacific basin". Am. J. Sci. 244 (11):
77291. doi:10.2475/ajs.244.11.772. Also in: Hess, H.H. (1947). International
Hydrographic Review 24: 8191. Missing or empty |title= (help) ; And Hess, H.H.
(1948). Smithsonian Institution, Annual Report for 1947: 281300. Missing or empty |
title= (help)

Hess, H.H.; Maxwell, J. C. (1953). "Major structural features of the south-west Pacific: a
preliminary interpretation of H. O. 5484, bathymetric chart, New Guinea to New
Zealand.". Proceedings of the 7th Pacific Science Congress: Held at Auckland and
Christchurch, New Zealand, 1949 2. Wellington: Harry H. Tombs, Ltd. pp. 1417.

Hess, H.H. (1954). "Geological hypotheses and the Earth's crust under the oceans". A
Discussion on the Floor of the Atlantic Ocean. Proceedings of the Royal Society of
London, Series A 222 (1150). pp. 34148.

Hess, H.H. (1955). "The oceanic crust". Journal of Marine Research 14: 42339.

Hess, H.H. (1955). A. W. Poldervaart, ed. "Crust of the Earth". Geological Society of
America, Special Paper No. 62 (Symposium). New York: The Society. pp. 391407. |
chapter= ignored (help)

Hess, H.H. (1959). "The AMSOC hole to the Earth's mantle". Transactions American
Geophysical Union 40: 340345. Bibcode:1959TrAGU..40..340H.
doi:10.1029/tr040i004p00340. Also in: Hess, H.H. (1960). Am. Scientist 47: 254263.
Missing or empty |title= (help)

Hess, H.H. (1960). "Preprints of the 1st International Oceanographic Congress (New
York, August 31-September 12, 1959)". Washington: American Association for the
Advancement of Science. (A). pp. 3334. |chapter= ignored (help)

Hess, H.H. (1960). "Evolution of ocean basins". Report to Office of Naval Research.
Contract No. 1858(10), NR 081-067. p. 38.

References
1.
"J Tuzo Wilson". Virtual Geoscience Center. Society of Exploration Geophysics.
Frankel, H. (1987). "The Continental Drift Debate". In H.T. Engelhardt Jr and A.L.
Caplan. Scientific Controversies: Case Solutions in the resolution and closure of disputes in
science and technology. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-27560-6.
Duncan, Francis (2012). Rickover: The Struggle for Excellence. Naval Institute Press.
ISBN 978-1591142218.
http://siris-libraries.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?uri=full=3100001~!210409!0 | The NavyPrinceton gravity expedition to the West Indies in 1932
Ewing, John; Ewing, Maurice (March 1959). "Seismic-refraction measurements in the
Atlantic Ocean basins, in the Mediterranean Sea, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and in the
Norwegian Sea". Geological Society of America Bulletin 70 (3): 291318.
Bibcode:1959GSAB...70..291E. doi:10.1130/0016-7606(1959)70[291:SMITAO]2.0.CO;2.
Heezen, B. C. (1960). "The rift in the ocean floor". Scientific American 203 (4): 98110.
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1060-98.
Wilson, J. Tuzo (December 1968). "A Revolution in Earth Science". Geotimes
(Washington DC) 13 (10): 1016.
Hess, H. H. (November 1, 1962). "History of Ocean Basins" (PDF). In A. E. J. Engel,
Harold L. James, and B. F. Leonard. Petrologic studies: a volume in honor of A. F. Buddington.
Boulder, CO: Geological Society of America. pp. 599620.

1.

"Harry H. Hess Medal". American Geophysical Union. Retrieved 12

December 2009.

James, Harold L. (1973). Harry Hammond Hess (1906-1969) (PDF). Washington D. C.:
National Academy of Sciences.

External links

Harry Hess (1906-1969) A Science Odyssey: People and Discoveries

Harry Hammond Hess Biography taken from Leitch, Alexander (1978). A Princeton
Companion. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-04654-9.
[show]

Presidents of the Geological Society of America

Authority
control

WorldCat

VIAF: 48231519

LCCN: n85803149

ISNI: 0000 0000 8226 4966

GND: 1036737128

SUDOC: 085103829

Categories:

American geologists

American geophysicists

Tectonicists

Deaths from myocardial infarction

People from New York City

United States Navy admirals

1906 births

1969 deaths

University of Cape Town academics

Yale University alumni

Burials at Arlington National Cemetery

Penrose Medal winners

Princeton University faculty

Rutgers University faculty

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