T. Wayland Vaughan

Thomas Wayland Vaughan, known as T. Wayland Vaughan, was an American geologist and oceanographer born September 20, 1870, in Jonesville, Texas, who died January 16, 1952, in Washington, D.C., and who became an expert in coral and coral reef research, foraminifera investigation and oceanographic studies, producing a doctoral dissertation on Eocene and Oligocene corals of the United States and numerous later publications on corals, reef formation and foraminifera. He worked as an assistant geologist for the United States Geological Survey from 1894 to 1903, and served as director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography from 1924 to 1936, where he refocused the institution toward oceanography and established programs in physical, chemical and geological oceanography. He won the Alexander Agassiz Medal in 1935 and the Mary Clark Thompson Medal in 1945, received Japan Order of the Rising Sun, Third Class, in 1940, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1917, the National Academy of Sciences in 1921 and the American Philosophical Society in 1923, served as president of the Geological Society of America in 1939, and received the Penrose Medal in 1946.