Matthew Fontaine Maury

Matthew Fontaine Maury was an American naval officer and oceanographer widely regarded as a founder of modern oceanography, earning him the nickname the Pathfinder of the Seas. Maury systematically compiled ships' logs recording winds, currents and weather conditions from across the world's oceans and used this data to produce his Wind and Current Chart of the North Atlantic, which showed sailors how to use prevailing currents and winds to shorten ocean voyages; by 1851 use of Maury's charts had cut an average of 40 to 44 days from the sailing passage between New York and San Francisco around Cape Horn. Maury developed a uniform system for recording oceanographic observations at sea that was subsequently adopted by navies and merchant fleets around the world, greatly expanding the systematic collection of ocean data. In 1855 Maury published The Physical Geography of the Sea, generally regarded as the first comprehensive textbook devoted to the study of oceanography.