In the 1960s, Oliver and his former graduate student, Bryan Isacks,[1] set up seismographic stations in the South Pacific to record earthquake activity, and the data collected led to the insight that part of the ocean floor was being pushed downward.

He attended Columbia on a football scholarship, interrupted by his service with the United States Navy as a Seabee in the South Pacific during World War II.

[5] The paper was based on the findings of earthquakes hundreds of miles under the Pacific Ocean found using a network of seismic detectors that Oliver and his team had placed on Fiji and Tonga.

The research by Oliver's team led them to conclude that the collision of tectonic plates was forcing material deep into the earth where they met below the Pacific Ocean, and provided strong evidence of the existence of continental drift, a theory that had been largely scoffed at by the scientific community when it was first proposed by Alfred Wegener in 1912.

This odd choice provoked speculation, but Oliver explained that decision was made before writing the paper, as all three authors worked full speed in what they saw as a race against other researchers.