J Harlen Bretz

J Harlen Bretz was an American geologist who lived from 1882 to 1981 and was renowned for demonstrating that massive catastrophic floods shaped the landscape of eastern Washington, a claim that fundamentally challenged the prevailing geological theory of uniformitarianism. Beginning field research on the Columbia River Plateau in 1922, he coined the term Channeled Scablands in 1923 to describe the heavily eroded terrain near the Grand Coulee and proposed the term Spokane Floods in 1925, arguing the terrain was created by catastrophic water flows originating from the ancient glacial Lake Missoula. He also wrote an influential 1942 paper on limestone cave morphology and origin, followed by detailed studies of Missouri caves in 1956 and Illinois caves in 1961. Though the geological establishment was initially skeptical of his flood theory, it was vindicated by the 1950s, and he received the Penrose Medal, the highest honor of the Geological Society of America, in 1979 at age ninety six, remarking that all his enemies were dead so he had no one left to gloat over.