William Maurice Ewing

William Maurice Ewing, known as Maurice Ewing, was an American geophysicist and oceanographer who lived from 1906 to 1974 and fundamentally advanced understanding of the ocean basins and the interior of the Earth. His research spanned seismic reflection and refraction in ocean basins, ocean bottom photography, submarine acoustics, deep sea core sampling and earthquake wave behavior, along with marine gravity measurement, seafloor mapping and sedimentation studies. He identified the SOFAR channel, a sound transmission pathway in ocean water, developed the sofar bomb detection device, made substantial contributions to plate tectonics theory, and originated Project Mogul, an early Cold War program for detecting Soviet nuclear tests. Over his career he authored more than three hundred forty scientific papers, led more than fifty oceanic expeditions, served as president of the American Geophysical Union and the Seismological Society of America, and founded the Lamont Geological Observatory, now the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, at Columbia University, where he collaborated with seismologist Frank Press and cartographer Marie Tharp. He received the Penrose Medal in 1974.