J. Lamar Worzel

He had a long and notable career as a research scientist and professor of oceanography at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution before following Ewing to the new Lamont Geological Observatory at Columbia University.

He conducted annual research on many ships, including the Vema, which set the stage for the rapid advances in marine geology and geophysics in the late 1940s and 1950s.

[2] In 1963 he led a team conducting an acoustic investigation which later found the remains of the nuclear powered submarine USS Thresher (SSN 593), lost after deep diving trials.

[1] He was a Gravity Specialist and Co-Chief Scientist and eventually Associate Director at Lamont Geological Observatory (now known as Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory), director of the Marine Science Institute Geophysical Laboratory at Galveston, Texas, from 1975–79, vice-president of Society of Exploration Geophysicists (1978–79), and principal investigator of the drilling program on the Blake plateau region off Jacksonville, Florida, in 1965.

Additionally, the Maurice Ewing and J. Lamar Worzel Professorship of Geophysics at Columbia University in New York is named in his honor.