Dr. J. Lamar Worzel, geophysicist, is a graduate of Lehigh University where he met Dr. Maurice Ewing with whom he had a 40 year working relationship.
Worzel had a long and notable career as a research scientist and professor of oceanography at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute before following Ewing to Columbia. 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. Along with Ewing and George Vine, he built the first camera designed to go to a depth of 3000 fathoms (5.5 km), in 1939.
Worzel was a fellow of the American Geophysical Union, and he is known for his important contributions to underwater acoustics, underwater photography, and gravity measurements at sea. He was 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, TX from 1975-79, vice-president of Society of Exploration Geophysicists (1978-79), president of PGI since 1974, and principal investigator of the drilling program on the Blake plateau region off Jacksonville, Florida in 1965.
Today, the J. Lamar Worzel Assistant Scientist Fund is a US$l million fund that supports young scientists pursuing careers in geophysical oceanography at Woods Hole. Additionally, the Maurice Ewing and J. Lamar Worzel Professor Emeritus of Geophysics at Columbia University in New York position is named in his honor.
Publications
- Propagation of Sound in the Ocean. [Three papers.] with Maurice Ewing & C.L Pekeris
- Gravity and Geodesy: 1. Gravity Investigations of the Subduction Zone
- Pendulum Gravity Measurements at Sea
- Tertiary Tectonics of Central Hispaniola and the Adjacent Caribbean Sea with John W. Ladd
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