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William Maurice Ewing: Pioneer Explorer of the Ocean Floor and Architect of Lamont

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William Maurice Ewing: Pioneer Explorer of the Ocean Floor and Architect of Lamont William Maurice Ewing: Pioneer Explorer of the Ocean Floor and Architect of Lamont William Wertenbaker, 358 Granite Street, Rockport, MA 01966 Maurice Ewing was a driving force in data, stretching the limits of what could marine geology for nearly 40 years until be done at sea and creating a dense body his death at age 67 in 1974. During the of observations and samples. While he was extraordinary expansion of marine geol- an exacting scientist with excellent ogy after World War II, he was the indis- instincts, above all he had a passion to pensable leader of the discipline. know. It was as explorer of two-thirds of Ewing had an ambitious curiosity. He Earth’s crust—directly and through the worked in a range of subjects, making con- generations of students he inspired—that Maurice Ewing at 38 in 1944. ©Lamont Doherty tributions to earthquake seismology, he had his greatest and most lasting influ- Geological Observatory. Used with permission. explosion seismology, marine acoustics, ence. Before science could explain it, one you ever met.” sedimentology, and tectonics. He adapted Ewing saw, perhaps better than anyone, He started in electrical engineering, seismic exploration methods to use in the how much there was to learn about the but soon had misgivings. “The engineer- oceans; explicated a large segment of the seafloor. He encouraged and he pushed ing students had funny paper with cross- earthquake seismogram, the coda; did and he bullied and he insisted on the col- ing lines on it; they were elaborately care- studies of Earth’s free oscillations; and lection of data (oceanwide at first and ful how they wrote figure eights; an described the ocean sound channel and worldwide later) at all times—as much inkblot was a catastrophe. The professors data and of as many kinds as men and were sarcastic Yankees,” Ewing said. “But machines were capable. Maybe more. the three men I’d been learning from in Ewing was an amalgam of unblended math and physics were such gentle people, traits and contradictions: a Texas farm boy the kind of people I liked. The nicest peo- dedicated in mind and body to the sea; an ple I ever met taught physics. I came to inspirational presence sometimes asleep in have essentially as private tutors men his own class; and a courteous Southerner straight from the greatest centers of learn- who was a terror to the hidebound. ing in the world. It was the middle of the In 1949, Ewing started the institution great revolution of quantum physics. he is most often associated with—the “All the classic papers came out while Lamont Geological Observatory (now I was at Rice, and as soon as the library got Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory), a them, the physics professor had us read branch of Columbia University, on an and discuss them and do the experi- estate outside of New York City. Starting ments—like diffraction of electrons.” with just Ewing and a handful of graduate Ewing was hooked. “Well, you only students, in a few years Lamont became get measles from people who have them. one of the world’s leading ocean research And I sure was in contact with people establishments. with bad cases.” Maurice Ewing was always a hands-on scientist. In 1926, his senior year, Ewing wrote Here, at 43 in 1950, he helps rig some large water School Days samples. Photo ©Woods Hole Oceanographic his first research paper, and it was pub- Institution. Used with permission. William Maurice "Doc" Ewing (with lished in Science. Walking back to his col- Maurice pronounced the English way, not lege room many late nights, sometimes the dispersion of sound in seawater. the French) was born in 1906 and grew up with moonlight glinting in the dew on the He also developed or greatly on a farm in the parched plains of north grass, he saw something that was both improved many instruments and tech- Texas. He was the oldest of seven children, pretty and interesting—and not in the niques for gathering geological and geo- all but one of whom were sent to college. technical literature: “Dew Bows by Moon- physical data at sea—the bathythermo- (The youngest, John, would join him in light,” as he titled his paper. graph, the piston corer, heat-flow probes, marine geology.) When Ewing applied to Many a brilliant man has not fulfilled sonar, hydrophones, gravimeters, deep-sea colleges, he was judged unprepared and his promise. Ewing had brilliance, but he cameras, and even winches. Using some of was repeatedly turned down. However, had more. At Rice, his labs and classes these, he joined in demonstrating early on Rice Institute (now Rice University) in were from nine in the morning to four in the existence and effects of turbidity cur- Houston was moved to change its admin- the afternoon. From five in the afternoon rents, and he led the first accurate observa- istrative mind after an indignant letter to midnight he held jobs to help pay his tions of an abyssal plain. from Ewing’s math teacher, rating him way. And there was also the need to fit in Ewing collected and caused to be col- over “anyone I ever met—or I guess any- homework, meals, and time with friends. lected a huge quantity and breadth of 28 GSA TODAY, October 2000 Field of Princeton and William Bowie, cleft at its midpoint by a rift. Careful recal- head of the Coast and Geodetic Survey. culation of the positions of seafloor earth- Today, the AGU awards honors named for quakes showed them strung along the each of them (one for Ewing, too). They length of the rift like a necklace of pre- wanted to send Ewing to sea, and they cious stones. Out in the middle of the sea, posed a question that Ewing would Earth’s crust was active, unstable, and expand outward in widening arcs across changing. one ocean and into the others. Lamont also was able to publish the Bowie and Field thought it an impor- first detailed maps of the seafloor in the tant geological problem to determine the North Atlantic (1959), South Atlantic structure of the continental shelf, estab- (1961), and Pacific and Indian (1968) lishing whether its steep outer edge was a ocean basins. The same basic crustal fea- tectonic fault or the edge of a giant wedge tures had been found in every basin—the of sediment. They had heard Ewing speak ridge and its rift, regions of abyssal hills, at AGU meetings and wondered if the seis- abyssal plains, trenches, and the continen- mic methods he worked with could be tal rise. done at sea. “If they had asked me to put seismo- Catnapping during a cruise on RV Atlantis, 1956. graphs on the Moon I would have agreed, Photo by Don Fay. ©Woods Hole Oceanographic I was so desperate to do research,” he said. Institution Archives. Used with permission. (Thirty years later, Ewing would initiate a The resolution for maintaining this project that did put seismographs on the schedule was pure Ewing. “In some of my moon.) freshman reading, it said that sleep is Ewing solved the problem of putting deepest and most restful in the first two listening gear under water by sealing stock hours. I thought about that. It looked to geophones in reliable over-the-counter me that I could just sleep for two hours rubber sheaths. He demonstrated "by sev- twice a day and then have time to do all eral masterly devices," wrote the geologist the stuff I had to do.” Walter Bucher, that the continental base- It worked pretty well for a while. ment sloped evenly down from an out- Then a professor invited Ewing to dinner. crop near Richmond, Virginia, to the lip of Before the meal, his host poured wine for the continental shelf, where it was covered his wife, daughter, Ewing, and himself. by 12,000 feet of sediments. Ewing had never so much as seen wine before. He was on his best behavior, sitting Seafloor Discoveries Maurice Ewing was devoted to new and ingenious chatting at one end of a long sofa. The instruments, such as this timed release mechanism, next thing he knew, he awoke in a bed In 1953, soon after founding Lamont, which was triggered by the dissolution of a block upstairs and it was daylight. Ewing acquired its first ship, the Vema. He of salt, seen at right. Photo ©Woods Hole Oceano- graphic Institution. Used with permission. Years later, sleep still took second secured the use of a second ship, the Con- rad, in 1962. Instead of making voyages of place to science. “Once, Doc joined the The brutal facts would be the back- a few months with defined goals to lim- ship at Nassau,” said colleague Charles bone of a new global theory of geology. By ited areas, Lamont’s ships soon circled the Drake. “He looked exhausted. He probably the mid-1960s, the dogged old idea of globe annually, accumulating 40,000 or so was. He usually is. I took the first watch, continental drift was turned on its ear, miles and 300 days at sea year after year. he took the second. He looked so pooped into seafloor spreading. The first motions Work did not stop; information was col- that I let him sleep that night, and stood of tectonics were in the rifted mid-ocean lected continuously with every usable his watch after mine. Along about 4 a.m. ridge, which was structurally the oceanic kind of measurement, whether or not any- up comes this real mad body.
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