(William) Maurice Ewing - Awards and honors

Oceanographer and seismologist, born in Lockney, Texas, USA. He taught at Lehigh University (1930–43), then at Columbia University (1944–72), where he became founding director of its Lamont (now Lamont–Doherty) Geological Observatory (1949). He left the observatory to join the Marine Biomedical Institute of the University of Texas (1972–4). A pioneer in oceanography, his gravity and seismographic surveys (1935–9) determined the vast thickness of continental margin sedimentary rocks, while his Atlantic explorations in the 1940s demonstrated the relative thinness of the earth's subocean crust. His later marine seismographic research (1956) indicated that the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is part of a continuous global submarine system, and that geological activity at its deep central rift supported the sea-floor spreading hypothesis of H H Hess. Ewing's controversial hypothesis of ice-age periodicity, based on freezing and thawing of the Arctic Ocean, remains unproven.

William Maurice "Doc" Ewing (May 12, 1906 – May 4, 1974) was an American geophysicist and oceanographer.

He has been described as a pioneering geophysicist who worked on the research of seismic reflection and refraction in ocean basins, ocean bottom photography, submarine sound transmission, deep sea coring of the ocean bottom, theory and observation of earthquake surface waves, fluidity of the earth's core, generation and propagation of microseisms, submarine explosion seismology, marine gravity surveys, bathymetry and sedimentation, natural radio-activity of ocean waters and sediments, study of abyssal plains and submarine canyons.

He was born in Lockney, Texas, where he was the eldest child of a large farm family.

He was a professor for most of his career at many Ivy League schools across the USA, a mentor to many of his students, and an author of hundreds of scientific papers.

He moved to Columbia University, becoming a professor of geology in 1947.

He divorced a second time, and married Harriet Greene Bassett in 1965. In 1972 he joined the University of Texas Medical Branch, and was named the head of the Division of Earth and Planetary Sciences of the Marine Biomedical Institute.

During his career he published over 340 scientific papers.

Awards and honors

Penrose Medal, 1974 (posthumously) Walter H. Bucher Medal, 1974 William Bowie Medal, 1957 Arthur L. Day Medal, 1949 John J. Carty Medal, 1963 Distinguished Public Service Award, 1955 Sidney Powers Memorial Medal, 1968 Robert Earl McConnell Award, 1973 National Medal of Science, 1973 Vega Medal Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, 1964 Elected to the National Academy of Sciences Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Elected to the American Philosophical Society Foreign Member of the Geological Society of London, 1964 Guggenheim Fellow, 1938, 1953, 1955 Awarded eleven honorary degrees. Geophysics Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch Marine Science Institute was renamed Maurice Ewing Hall. The Maurice Ewing Medal was named after him.