Felix Andries Vening Meinesz

Felix Andries Vening Meinesz was a Dutch geophysicist and geodesist born July 30, 1887, in The Hague, who died August 10, 1966, in Amersfoort, and who graduated in civil engineering from Delft in 1910 before becoming a part time professor at Utrecht University in 1927 and joining Delft University of Technology in 1937. He developed a precise method for measuring gravity aboard ships, a breakthrough that revealed major gravitational anomalies over ocean floors and advanced understanding of continental movement, directed the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute from 1945 to 1951, and served as president of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics from 1948 to 1951. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, received the Howard N. Potts Medal in 1936, the Penrose Medal in 1945, the William Bowie Medal and the Alexander Agassiz Medal in 1947, the Vetlesen Prize in 1962, and the Wollaston Medal in 1963.