Rear Admiral Raymond Stanton Patton (29 December 1882 – 25 November 1937) was the second Director of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey and a career officer in the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey Corps, the predecessor of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Officer Corps.

[1] Within a month of his graduation, Patton accepted a position in 1904 in the Field Corps of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, which at the time was an entirely civilian organization.

[1] Returning to operations along the U.S. East Coast, Patton took part in projects such as triangulation in Massachusetts and resurveys of the Delaware Bay and Albemarle Sound from 1910 to 1911.

In the summer of 1911 he became executive officer of the survey ship USC&GS A. D. Bache, operating along the United States Gulf Coast.

[2] Patton was assigned to the U.S. Navy's Bureau of Navigation, with which he took up duty at the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., as Assistant in the Time Service and Nautical Instrument Division.

During Patton's tenure on the committee, it found that almost every state along the U.S. East and Gulf Coasts faced beach erosion problems and struggled to cope with them independently.

In order to bring together the funding and personnel necessary to address the beach erosion problem on a national scale, the Committee on Shoreline Investigations and the governors of the states along the East and Gulf Coasts organized through joint action the American Shore and Beach Preservation Association in December 1926, with Patton playing a major role in its formation and serving as its secretary-treasurer until June 1929 and as one of its directors until his death in 1937.

Patton, who had by then reached the rank of captain, saw his long tour as chief of the Chart Division finally come to an end on 29 April 1929, when Herbert Hoover, by then President of the United States, selected him to succeed Jones as director.

In 1936, Patton received a promotion to rear admiral, becoming the first officer of the Coast and Geodetic Survey Corps to reach flag rank.

[1] During his Coast and Geodetic Survey career, Patton earned a reputation for having a brilliant mind and a wide range of interests – he authored numerous articles on a wide variety of subjects for the Coast and Geodetic Survey and for scientific and engineering journals – and as a modest and unassuming colleague and leader with high ideals and integrity.

Devotion to service by men of the character, integrity, and standing of Admiral Patton gives a new assurance to American citizenship; it gives us greater confidence in the future of our country.