The History of Harry Hammond Hess

Harry Hammond Hess (1906 - 1969) Harry Hess became a professor of geology at Princeton in 1932. His specialty was the study of arced chains of islands with active volcanoes. When homo War II started, he was part of the Naval Reserve. He commanded a sub naval base during World War II, and stay in the Reserves after wards, rose to the rank of rear admiral. Hesss source duty during the war was in New York City, estimating enemy positions in the North Atlantic. He then saw active duty, controlling an attack transport ship. He made four major(ip) combat landings, incuding Iwo Jima. His ship was equipped for sounding the marine floor, which was useful for Hess both as ships commander and as a geologist. In 1945, Hess measured the oceans to the deepest points to date, about seven miles deep. He discovered hundreds of flat-topped mountains on the Pacific floor. He named them guyots (after the initial geology professor at Princeton), and found them very puzzling: They looked analogous their tops were eroded, but they were 2 kilometers under water. After the war he continued researching guyots and midocean ridges, as well as discordant mineral studies. With the discovery in 1953 of the Great Global Rift, a volcanic valley running along the midocean ridges, Hess looked back at data he had collected during the war.

In 1960 (and with further nicety in 1962), he hypothesized that the sea-floor was spreading from vents in the Rift, where hot magma oozed up. As the magma cooled it forced the existing sea-floor away from the Rift on both side. This theory accounted for and united several separate puzzles in marine geology: the youth of the ocean floor, the presence of island arcs, the deep sea trenches, and the tooth root of the midocean ridges. Hesss puzzling guyots fit into the sea-floor spreading picture, as well. Its believed they were once-active volcanoes which rose in a higher place the waters surface before being eroded by the atmosphere down to sea level. As the sea-floor moved... If you want to circumvent a full essay, order it on our website: Orderessay

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