Geophysicist, born in New York City, New York, USA. While serving with the US Navy in the Pacific during World War 2, he not only located submarines with sounding gear, but was the first to report the existence of the truncated seamounts known as guyots. He led Project Mohole, the first expedition to drill through the earth's oceanic crust to the mantle beneath (19616). His long-term interest in the igneous rock peridotite led to his proposal that this high-temperature substance was basic to investigations of island arc formation, gravity anomalies, mountain building, and the earth's deeper crustal structure. While Chairman of Princeton's geology department (195066), he accurately theorized that spreading of mid-ocean ridges was the source of new mantle-derived continental material. As an adviser to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), he was one of the first scientists to examine lunar rocks.
Harry Hammond Hess (May 24, 1906 – August 25, 1969) was an American geologist.
Considered one of the "founding fathers" of the unifying theory of plate tectonics, Rear Admiral Dr. Harry Hammond Hess was born on May 24, 1906 in New York City.
Education
Hess entered Yale University as an electrical engineering major in 1923. After his Yale education, Hess worked as an exploration geologist in Rhodesia for two years before beginning graduate studies at Princeton University.
Teaching Career
Harry Hess taught for a year (1932-1933) at Rutgers University in New Jersey and spent a year as a research associate at the Geophysical Laboratory of Washington, D.
Military Career
Hess joined the US Navy during World War II, becoming captain of the USS Cape Johnson a transport ship equipped with a new technology: sonar. This command would later prove to be key in Hess's development of his theory of sea floor spreading. This unplanned wartime scientific surveying enabled Hess to collect ocean floor profiles across the North Pacific Ocean, resulting in the discovery of flat-topped submarine volcanoes, which he termed guyots, after the nineteenth century geographer Arnold Henry Guyot.
Scientific Discoveries
In 1960 Hess made his single most important contribution, which is regarded as part of the major advance in geologic science of the 20th century. Hess's report was formally published in his History of Ocean Basins (1962), which for a time was the single most referenced work in solid-earth geophysics. Hess was also involved in many other scientific endeavours, including the Mohole project (1957-1966), an investigation onto the feasibility and techniques of deep sea drilling.
Death
Hess died from a heart attack in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, on August 25, 1969, while chairing a meeting of the Space Science Board of the National Academy of Sciences.
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