Aaron C. Waters

Aaron Clement Waters, known as Aaron C. Waters, was an American geologist, petrologist and volcanologist who lived from 1905 to 1991, earning his bachelor and master degrees from the University of Washington and his doctorate from Yale University under Adolph Knopf. He held positions at Stanford University from 1930 to 1951, Johns Hopkins University from 1952 to 1963, the University of California, Santa Barbara from 1963 to 1967, and the University of California, Santa Cruz from 1967 to 1972, where he established a doctoral program in earth sciences. He did pioneering work on the Columbia River Basalt and was an authority on volcanology, igneous and metamorphic petrology and geomorphology, researching volcanic base surge deposits and flow direction determination in basalts, and co-authored the widely used textbook Principles of Geology in 1951, the leading introductory geology textbook for more than two decades. During the Apollo program he contributed to lunar geology research and helped train astronauts bound for the Moon. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1964. He received the Penrose Medal in 1982.