Drummond Matthews

Drummond Hoyle Matthews FRS[1] (5 February 1931 – 20 July 1997), known as "Drum",[2] was a British marine geologist and geophysicist and a key contributor to the theory of plate tectonics.

His work, along with that of fellow Briton Fred Vine and Canadian Lawrence Morley, showed how variations in the magnetic properties of rocks forming the ocean floor could be consistent with, and ultimately help confirm, Harry Hammond Hess's 1962 theory of seafloor spreading.

During the 1950s, however, extensive surveys of the ocean floor revealed a global, linked system of mid-ocean ridges, all of which exhibited high thermal flow and considerable seismic activity.

If new crust were being formed at the ridges and moving away, as Hess theorized, then reversals in the Earth's magnetic polarity would result in just the kind of parallel, symmetrical anomalies that Matthews' survey had found.

Confirmation of the Earth's polarity reversals a few years later not only further validated the Vine–Matthews–Morley hypothesis but provided a timescale allowing the rate of spreading to be estimated for each section of ocean ridge.