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- In the 1910 census Maurice's age is listed as ?.
Encyclopedia of World Biography� on William Maurice Ewing The American oceanographer William Maurice Ewing (1906-1974) was aleaderin modern earth science research, especially in the applicationsofgeophysics to oceanography.
Maurice Ewing was born in Lockney, Texas, on May 12, 1906. He wasthefourth of 10 children of Floyd Ford Ewing, a farmer andhardwaremerchant, and Hope Hamilton Ewing. His older siblings died atvery youngages, so he grew up as the eldest of seven. He preferred tobe known asMaurice, rather than William. His parents stressed theimportance ofeducation, and Ewing studied diligently and received ascholarship tocollege. Working at night to support himself, hereceived his bachelor's(1926), master's (1927), and doctoral (1931)degrees from Rice Institutein Houston. He first majored in electricalengineering and later switchedto mathematics and physics, which hefound more interesting. Onephysicist, H. A. Wilson, had a majorinfluence on Ewing. Wilson held aweekly series at Rice attended bymany prestigious scientists who made abig impression on Ewing.
Won Geological Grant
Ewing was instructor in physics at the University of Pittsburgh from1929to 1930. He moved to Lehigh University as instructor of physics in1930,becoming assistant professor in 1936 and associate professor ofgeologyin 1940. Probably the most important event of his professionallifeoccurred in 1935, when a committee of distinguished geologistsasked ifhe would undertake the task of applying the techniques ofgeophysics tothe ocean areas. He jumped at the chance and with theirsupport obtaineda grant from the Geological Society of America for aclassic refractionstudy of the structure of the Continental Shelf offthe East Coast of theUnited States. This was quickly followed by asuccessfulgravity-measuring cruise on the Barracuda, using the newlydevelopedgravity pendulum apparatus introduced by F.A.
Vening Meinesz. With the aid of some of his students, Ewing built ocean-bottomcamerasand automatic apparatus for making seismic refractionmeasurements at thebottom of the deep-ocean basins. Several seismicmeasurements had beensuccessfully made by the time World War II brokeout. In September 1940the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC)was being discussed byleaders of the scientific community as animportant adjunct to themilitary in the event of U.S. involvement inthe war. Early recognizingthe importance and probable results of thewar, Ewing obtained a leave ofabsence from Lehigh University and movedto the Woods Hole OceanographicInstitution (WHOI) to commence defenseresearch. Without recompense,until the NDRC was officially formed inJanuary 1941, he and his formerstudents wrote Sound Transmission inSea Water, the standard manualthroughout the war and long after forunderstanding and predicting theresults of sound-echo ranging. Theyalso redesigned the bathythermographfrom a bulky, tedious, andunreliable instrument to one capable ofobtaining temperature-depthinformation to depths of 900 feet from shipsunderway at speeds up to20 knots. It was adopted by the Navy and was thestandard instrumentwith only minor changes for over 20 years.
During the war Ewing was the leading physicist at WHOI in thedevelopmentand application of underwater photography and underwatersound for use bythe Navy. It was in this period that he introduced thelong-range soundtransmission studies, resulting in the SOFAR systemand providing thebasic ideas behind the Navy's long-range surveillanceand detectionsystems.
Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory
In 1946 Ewing initiated an extensive program of geophysical trainingforgraduate students at Columbia University. He was promoted toprofessor in1947 and was made Higgins Professor of Geology in 1949.That yearColumbia made available the former Thomas W. Lamont estatefor the use ofthe geophysics group to undertake studies in earthquakeseismology. TheLamont Geological Observatory was formed as a part ofthe department ofgeology with Ewing named director. In 1961 theobservatory was changed toa research institute within the universityto promote research with otheruniversity departments; in 1969 the namewas changed to theLamont-Doherty Geological Observatory.
From 1947 to his retirement Ewing continued his work at ColumbiaandWHOI. During his career, he carried out an extensive researchcareerwriting or cowriting 280 papers and three books. He received 10honorarydegrees from universities in four countries and 26 medals andawards frominstitutions and scientific societies of eight nations. Hedied at theage of 67 in 1974. His wife, Harriet, collected many of hisprivatepapers and donated them to the University of Texas. They arehoused atthe Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center in Austin.
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1906 - 1974 (67 years)
