Kathleen (Kathy) Crane (born 1951) is an American marine geologist, best known for her contributions to the discovery of hydrothermal vents on the Galápagos Rift along the East Pacific Rise in the mid-1970s.
[1] In 1977, she received a doctorate from Scripps Institution of Oceanography with a dissertation entitled "Hydrothermal Activity and Near Axis Structure at Mid-Ocean Spreading Centers".
From 1977-1979, she studied mid-ocean ridges as a postdoctoral fellow with Robert (Bob) Ballard at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
[4] In February 1977, Crane's map and transponders enabled a team of geochemists and geophysicists, led by chief scientists John (Jack) Corliss, from Oregon State University, Tjeerd van Andel from [[Stanford University, Richard (Dick) Von Herzen from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and Robert (Bob) Ballard from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, to return to the Clambake site with the deep-ocean research submersible, DSV Alvin on the R/V Knorr.
[11] In 1990, Crane was part of an expedition of American, Soviet and Canadian scientists, sponsored by the National Geographic Society and the Soviet Academy of Sciences, that discovered hydrothermal vents on the bottom of Lake Baikal in southern Siberia, which revealed that the lake lies in a continental rift zone.