Harry Hess Centennial
WebEdition Supplement, July, 2006
From the Spring 2006 issue of The Smilodon
Harry Hess in the early 1960’s.
Introduction to this WebEdition Supplement to the Spring 2006 issue of The Smilodon
The authors of the original letters were asked to provide about 250-300 words. However, very few could keep to that amount. So
it was necessary with limited publication space to edit the letters to fit the space available. A word count of the published, but edited,
letters that appeared in The Smilodon is 6,092, whereas the word count of the complete letters (not including the late arrivals) amounts
to 13,427. So only about 45% made the printed edition. Since many held to the smaller word limit, the big cuts were made in only
a few very long letters. However, it was felt that so many interesting comments were made that the entire original texts as submitted
should be made available. So here they are!
We have made few changes, principally putting in the class numeral, and other information for identification purposes. In addition
five letters arrived too late to meet the deadline. Their comments are included at the end. In addition, more photos were submitted than
we could use, so we have included here all of those submitted, including a repeat of the original ones in the Spring 2006 Smilodon.
W. E. Bonini, Editor
Laurie Wanat, Production Editor
The Smilodon, July 1, 2006
The Smilodon, a Web Supplement
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July 1, 2006
Remembering Harry Hess
One hundred years ago, on May 27, 1906, Harry Hammond Hess *32, faculty 1934-69, was
born in New York City. Although his life was shortened by a heart attack at the age of 63 in 1969,
he had a profound influence on geologic thought in the 20th Century. Arthur F. Buddington *16,
faculty1917-59, wrote an obituary in which he recounted the five lives of Hess’ remarkable life, “(1)
as a family man, (2) a member of the family of Princeton University, (3) a mineralogist, geologist,
geological geophysicist and oceanographer, (4) an officer in the U. S. Naval Reserve and a statesmanscientist, and (5) the organizer, fund-raiser, and administrator of the Princeton Caribbean Geological
Research Project.”
Hess’ intellectual accomplishments are well recorded in the literature, so here we look at Hess as
a person and his influence on a generation of students - especially, on a group of students graduating Princeton in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Graduate students of that era gathered in Calgary, Alberta,
last September to celebrate the beauty and geology of the Canadian Rockies at the Third Princeton GeoGrads Reunion. One evening at the Buffalo Mountain Lodge in Banff was set aside to
Hess the typist, 1932, at Princeton.
remember Harry Hess. Here are some of the thoughts and memories of him.
Acknowledgements: Roger Macqueen *65 was most helpful in putting everything together, including supplying some photos; Rosemary
Barker recorded and transcribed some presentations; Ted Konigsmark *58, Peter Mattson *57, and Dave MacKenzie *54 sent photographs;
and Don Wise *57 took over 200 photos during the Reunion, many of which are in the printed edition. We owe special thanks to Harry’s
son, George B. Hess, Professor of Physics, University of Virginia, for family photos that appear in this issue. For space reasons, many essays were
shortened, but the complete series of contributions will be appear on the Departmental website in early July. http://geoweb.princeton.edu/. Please
note that the contents of this document may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without permission. For more information on reprinting,
please contact us at [email protected].
Harry Hess Talk By Dick Holland ’47, Faculty 1950-1972
In the spring of 1950 I was asked to come to Princeton to be
interviewed for a job in the Geology Department. I had graduated
from Princeton in Chemistry, and was then in my third year as a
graduate student at Columbia. Harry Hess, the incoming Chairman in Geology, asked me what 1 planned to do in my research.
I outlined some of my ideas. Harry was pleased, and it became
obvious that he was going to offer me a job. I demurred somewhat:
“You know, I’m not quite 23 yet, and I don’t think I’m ready to
teach anybody anything, especially not at Princeton”. Harry’s
response was perfect: “You know, Dick; if we didn’t think that
your lectures ten years from now would be better than the ones
you are apt to give in the fall, I wouldn’t offer you the job.” Of
course, my reaction was: “My God, they’re going to keep me for
ten years!” As it turned out, I stayed for twenty-two. January 5,
2006 <[email protected]>
myself to join the BC Geological Survey (then the BC Dept. of
Mines, Mineralogical Branch), Harry said that I should try to start
mapping the Queen Charlotte Islands. His thought was that its
west coast dropped sharply from alpine elevations to deep oceanic
depths and that there must be a reason. At the time the Queen
Charlotte Fault was not known and the islands were virtually terra
nova. As chance had it, six years later the BC Government was
trying to encourage iron mining in the Province but at the same
time was cutting funds for geological surveys. I, with the help of
my boss Stuart Holland (Princeton *33), proposed that we start
a mapping project to outline favourable areas for magnetite skarn
deposit that industry could then fly. The government could hardly
refuse.
Consequently, I did map the whole of the Charlottes. The very
large QC earthquake on the fault was the year before I started
and I showed the small number of old soundings along the west
coast were contoured wrongly and, when corrected, displayed a
trench tracing the fault. Harry always thought globally and guided
students to critical projects. Incidentally, we also found magnetite
deposits.” <[email protected]>
Atholl Sutherland Brown *54 on Harry Hess’ thinking
16 Jan 2006. A Note on Harry Hess and his thoughts leading
toward conceptualizing the Mohole, deep drilling and the theory
of Plate Tectonics. The facts of the following note may be well left
to others in more elaborate form.
In 1951 Harry gave a course supposedly for senior undergraduates that he called Advanced General Geology. It was attended by
all the resident graduate students because not only was he thinking
out loud but he welcomed discussion. With guys like Gene Shoemaker present there was no shortage of this. During these sessions
he started describing the dearth of sediments and sedimentary
rocks in the deep ocean basins and gave figures for the amount that
was missing. He felt there had to be a method of recycling them.
I believe this soon led him towards concepts of possible solutions
and methods of testing.
17 Jan 2006. A further brief note on Harry Hess and his global
thinking that might be of interest. “In 1952, when I committed
The Smilodon, a Web Supplement
Dave MacKenzie *54
In the early 1950s, the attention of many petrologists was on the
granitization controversy. But Hess saw that the keys to understanding earth’s features lay at the other end of the petrologic spectrum,
the ultramafic rocks, and in island arcs and ocean basins. Yet his
breakthrough hypothesis of sea-floor spreading in the early 1960s
was preceded by concepts that later turned out to be discredited
byways. One invoked a primary peridotite magma as the source of
alpine-type peridotites. Even in the face of contrary experimental
data, he was reluctant to abandon the idea. Another concept he
championed was the tectogene, a down-buckling of the earth’s crust
to explain the strong negative gravity anomalies associated with
many island arcs. Here is Jacques Béland’s *53 take on the tecto-
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July 1, 2006
Memories of Harry Hess by Reg Shagam *56, December 20,
2005
To understand this let me remind you of a problem in the Coast
Ranges of Venezuela which puzzled about 6 graduate members
of Harry’s Caribbean crew. An E-W belt of quartzo-feldspathic
metamorphics (Caracas Group) along the coast is in fault contact
with an E-W belt of basic volcanics (Villa de Cura Group) to
the south. The paucity of fossils and lack of radiometric age data
stymied all efforts to establish the age relationships of the two
belts. If the volcanic belt was the younger how come one never
found the volcanics intrusive into the quartzo-feldspathic belt? If
the reverse how come one never found pebbles of the volcanics in
the Caracas Group, moreover what happened to the thick pile of
sediment which presumably once overlay the volcanics in the latter
situation? Harry solved the problem by proposing obduction of
marine volcanics onto the continental margin. Keep in mind this
was mid- to late-fifties...BPT (Before Plate Tectonics !). Harry’s
idea when told now draws yawns; at the time it was mind-boggling
science.
Years later I asked him: “Harry, what gave you the idea for the
obduction of the Villa de Cura?” “You did” I looked at him openmouthed; “Huh?” “Yes. You mapped that fossiliferous limestone
near the top of the sediments and showed its constant spatial relationship to the volcanics. Then Ron Oxburgh *60 and Alfredo
Menedez *62 showed how the relationship persisted around the
sharp ‘elbow’ of that contact as it was traced to the west. Clearly
the steep fault separating the two belts must once have been subhorizontal and then subsequently rotated. There was no possible
continental source for the volcanics; they must have slid in from
the Caribbean!”
Once explained it was pretty obvious (and especially to me).
The message was: “Trust your eyes and link them to your mind”!
Harry had done such a thing many times before. Another instance
of same was when he suggested that the beveled edges of guyots
represented drowned wave-cut benches. How many would have
thought of the idea that a short gently sloping surface under 1-2
km of water in the middle of the Pacific Ocean was a wave-cut
terrace?!
To a degree Harry’s mind operated on the Holmesian principle:
“Eliminate the impossible; what remains, however, implausible
Tectogene, or tecto-Jean drawing by Jacques Béland *53.
gene or tecto-Jean. I am sending the figure and Jacques’ approval
by mail. (see figure). So even with his extraordinary intuition, the
path to sea-floor spreading and plate tectonics led to some deadends. Note: Jacques has given me written approval to include his
figure. <[email protected]>
Memories of Harry By Les Coleman *55, 3 January 2006
I first met Harry nearly a month after arriving in Princeton in
August, 1952. I was in the office collecting my mail when Miss
Law said, “Coleman, you should meet Dr. Hess”. I turned around
expecting to see the distinguished looking gentleman I had visualized when I applied to Princeton - an image resulting from reading
several of his well-ordered and elegantly reasoned papers and from
his Germanic surname. Instead I saw an almost scruffy, far from
clean-shaven character in khaki slacks and an open-necked shirt
with a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth
After the academic formality then prevailing at Canadian universities, the easy going camaraderie between faculty and graduate
students at Princeton was a revelation. For me, it was epitomized
by my associations with Harry. Among my most vivid memories of
those years, is working evenings in his lab alongside him and Bob
Smith*54, then his other research assistant. All of us (then) smoked
and Bob and I learned that if you were sitting next to Harry at the
microscope bench, you didn’t put your cigarette down on the edge
of the bench next to him or soon he would unwittingly be smoking
it. We also learned that if we were out of cigarettes, we could help
ourselves to the Chesterfields, of which there was always a carton,
in one of the left hand drawers of his desk in the office next door.
Conversations those evenings covered a wide range of topics which,
among others, included the persuasive evidence being presented for
continental drift and that, on the basis of what we then believed
about the physical properties of the crust and mantle, it wasn’t
possible. This, of course, was only a year or so before Harry came
up with the solution to the problem, i.e. seafloor spreading.
While sartorial and housekeeping neatness might not have been
among his obvious traits, Harry’s mind was brilliant and orderly;
he was endowed with a wonderful sense of humor; and was one
of the most considerate and generous persons that I have been
privileged to know. <[email protected]>
The Smilodon, a Web Supplement
Maracay, Venezuela, 1951. Left to right: Marge and Jim MacLachlan *52; John
Maxwell, faculty; Raymond Smith *51; Harry Hess, faculty; in front of the
Yellow Monster. Photo by Dave MacKenzie *54.
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July 1, 2006
Hess on a field trip at the 2nd Caribbean Geological Congress, Rosario,
Puerto Rico, January 1959. Photo by
Peter Mattson *57
Even the microprobe can’t beat that.
But, for me, there’s much more to Harry Hess. He seemed
to respect my observational abilities and always gave me serious
responses to question I posed from problems that arose in my research , even very esoteric problems. And he listened and responded
carefully to hypotheses. He didn’t challenge. He was collegial to us
all from the day we entered grad school. Five minutes with him at
a GSA or AGU meeting recharged my intellectual batteries more
than anything or anybody else ever did. I can’t say that he and I
were close buddies, but close enough. I miss him to this day.
I’ll close with something more general, but still revealing. Hess
told me that, as Captain of the USS Cape Johnson, he never
returned stateside with any alcoholic beverages aboard. Any such
stores left were always donated at his last port of call, and always
to enlisted personnel.
must be the truth”. It sounds
simple but very few have been
able to match Harry at that
game. Me either.
<[email protected]>
Stories about Harry Hess
from Bill Poole*56, January
25, 2006
Your call for stories about
Harry Hess brought out of
my fading and not altogether
trustworthy memory, this one
about Harry’s smoking. Harry
Hess (‘Triple H’ or ‘H cubed’
as some of us called him, to
ourselves) in the early 1950s
was a smoker, a great smoker, a
nearly constant smoker it seems.
I can still picture those nicotine-painted finger tips. On one occasion, he was invited to lecture to geology staff and students at
Columbia University and several Princeton grads accompanied
him. Schermerhorn Hall it seemed to me was a modern building
characterized by cleanliness and clanging doors, quite different
from the venerable, well-worn Guyot Hall. Harry stepped up to
the front of the room full of people, pulled out a cigarette despite
many signs forbidding smoking, and lit it with a match while his
eyes searched the room for an ashtray. Not finding one, he casually
tossed the match to the floor in front of the audience and proceeded
to lecture. It was hard for us from Princeton to suppress a giggle
while seeing the look of astonishment on some of the faces of the
Columbians. Harry was a smoker! <[email protected]>
Harry Hess by Peter Mattson *57, December 2005
Leila and Peter Mattson *57 spent about ten months in southwestern Puerto Rico in 1954-56, Peter doing thesis research and
Leila coping with everything else. Harry visited from time to time,
exercising loose direction and giving encouragement. I mostly remember his dropping cigarette ashes everywhere, but advising me
to keep my geologic map up-to-the-minute, outlining and coloring
to make it understandable to him and others. Leila remembers
burning the toast at an early breakfast (I remember this as our
honeymoon; Leila humpfs), and Harry calmly scraping off the
burned parts and eating the rest. As a holdover from less healthy
tropical locales, Harry ate no salads and consumed beer and rum,
but little water. We rinsed all our fresh vegetables in weak Clorox
solutions.
He did, however, get me successfully through the thesis and defense, and even did most of the preparation of the thesis for GSA
publication while I was in the Army. As I remember, it included the
last large colored geologic map published in the GSA Bulletin, part
of a 1960 special issue devoted to Hess student Caribbean theses.
Largely due to Harry’s inspiration, the map showed that southwestern Puerto Rico had a basement of serpentinized peridotite,
possibly still part of the mantle or at least a very thick thrust slice
coming from the mantle. Later work by fellow Hess student Emile
Contribution from Manny Bass, January 18, 2006
Of all the class notes I ever took in any class, and school, I’ve
referred to those from Hess’ Advanced Mineralogy, Saturday morning, Fall, 1951, more than any others. His topics were thematic and
the theses sounded repeatedly throughout my geologic experiences.
But I learned almost as much just watching him work. Late one
morning after Advanced Mineralogy, Shagam *56 and I talked to
Hess about something or other standing around his x-ray machine.
As we talked he powdered a sample in an agate mortar, smeared
an aliquot on a slide with water or alcohol, let it dry, mounted
the side on the holder, set the diffractometer, at 25o , I think,
started the machine, and, about 0 seconds later, the stylus went
off-scale, to return about 215 seconds later to baseline. Hess said,
“Andalusite.” Elapsed time, about 12 minutes. I recovered from a
gaping jaw enough to ask what he’ just done. A few years later the
x-ray diffractometer was my standard tool for unknown minerals,
and it plus the petrographic microscope for fine-grained rocks.
A 40o whole-rock diffraction pattern, about 40 minutes on the
machine, of an aphanititic volcanic rock or mudstone completes
a “90%” description, including structural state of most feldspars,
of an oceanic basalt, or a rhyolite or ignimbrite from the basement
of the Central US about as fast as any other set of tools I know of.
The Smilodon, a Web Supplement
Gathering at the end Caribbean Geological Congress, Rosario, Puerto Rico, January 1959. Left to right: Emile Pessagno *60 and spouse (name thought to be
Betty), Annette Hess, two ;unknowns, and Harry Hess, standing. Photo by Peter
Mattson *57
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building. Dr. Hess (it was not until later that he would become
“Harry”) shortly wandered into the room and was soon involved
in the discussion. To bolster his argument, one of the older graduate students triumphantly referred to something that Harry had
published in a paper some years before. I shall never forget Harry’s
reaction. Harry cocked his head, gave his little smile and chuckle,
and with a twinkle in his eye said “Oh – I don’t believe that any
more! Here’s what I think now.” And with that, Harry went on
to enthusiastically describe his new idea. At that moment I knew
I really liked Harry.
Although the discussion was about mountain building, Harry
taught several other valuable lessons. The first, and most obvious
lesson, was to always look at a problem with the newest and best
information available. Quickly discard old ideas that no longer fit
– even if your name is on them. The second lesson is to always seek
the scientific truth. The truth may be difficult to see, and there
may be digressions and U-turns in getting there, but the important
objective is to get to the truth. The third lesson is that, with a smile
and chuckle, you can enjoy, and help others enjoy, the trip toward
scientific truth.
During my subsequent career in oil exploration, there were
many times when new data and new decisions came rapidly. At
those times, I often recalled the lessons learned that afternoon and
tried to use them as a guide toward making the right decision. It
was comforting to know that Harry was there, at least in spirit.
<[email protected]>
1959, field trip, 2nd Caribbean Geological Conference, Rosario, Puerto Rico. Left
to right: Verners Zans, Jamaican Geological Survey; Harry Hess; Bill Benson, NSF.
Photo by W. E. Monroe, USGS, courtesy of Peter Mattson *57
Pessagno *60 and myself showed Jurassic and early Cretaceous
radiolarian cherts resting on the peridotite, thus limiting the age
of the mantle in the northeastern Caribbean.
<[email protected]>
Professor Harry Hess by Finley Campbell, January 20, 2006
His broad philosophic overview of the place of Earth Sciences
in the intellectual evolution of mankind was apparent in all of his
remarks. The tools to study the earth ranged from all of the basic
sciences of mathematics, physics, chemistry, botany and biology
employed within the social and humanistic constraints of accepted
logic.
I can recall when our student group plotted to seek intellectual
clarification of various aspects of continental drift and plate tectonics by seeking Harry’s advanced views on these topics in the
mineralogy laboratory. There we could get him to draw relationships on the blackboard and elaborate on his theories instead of
having us measure 2V’s on pyroxenes from the Stillwater Complex.
The mineralogy eventually was completed but the pre-universal
stage discussions became a very important part of the laboratory
sessions.
At the personal level I will never forget the day he came up to
me in a corridor of Guyot with a letter in his hand and said it was
from a department head in a university asking for suggestions of a
candidate to teach mineralogy and crystallography and suggested
that I should apply. I did not think of myself as a mineralogist or
crystallographer or of having a university career. Harry thought
otherwise, and here I am almost 50 years later.
<[email protected]>
Comments by Ray Price *58, January 3, 2006
I didn’t have the privilege of being a research student working under Harry’s supervision. However, I did take some of his
graduate courses, and was deeply influenced by the example that
he set. I will describe a few my memories about his style and his
influence.
The first day in his graduate course in mineralogy was truly
memorable. We were a diverse group of new grad students with
dissimilar backgrounds in the subject. Some of us had completed
undergraduate courses in optical mineralogy, but at least one had
never looked down a microscope. Harry wasted no time. After an
hour or two of lecturing he assigned us the task of determining feldspar compositions using a universal stage and the mineral samples
Comments on Harry Hess By Ted Konigsmark *58, October
19, 2005
Fifty years ago, as a new graduate student in the Geology Department at Princeton, I found myself in an unused classroom near
the mineralogy laboratory participating in an impromptu discussion with several other graduate students - the sort of discussion
that just “happens.” The topic of our discussion was mountain
The Smilodon, a Web Supplement
Hess in the San Juan de los Morros area, Venezuela, 1957. Photo by Ted Konigsmark *58.
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July 1, 2006
was a Canadian and there was Harry Hess, and the question was,
who was going to make it? Miss Law was sitting there taking notes,
and they had this discussion. When unanimity was reached, Bud
shouted to Miss Law “It’s Harry!” Indeed, in the fall, Harry came,
but it wasn’t the Harry that they had thought. They had voted for
the Canadian, but the man who showed up was Harry Hess. Bud
(Arthur Buddington) smiled gracefully and welcomed him; he
never batted an eye, and that’s where things are a mystery! Whether
this is true or not I don’t know. If this story was invented, I wouldn’t
wonder if Harry invented it! It was like him, you know.
I’ve often wondered about that picture that hung in Harry’s
house, the little admiral, do you remember? It was a little boy,
dreamy-eyed, looking through a window at the sea and a sailing
ship out there, and this was passed off as having been a painting of
Harry when he was a little boy. I would not be at all surprised if
that was a much later gift or whether Harry himself found it and
took a shine to it. He wasn’t yet an admiral, but he had become
deeply ingrained in the navy, but anyway of course, he wound up
an admiral. Well, you know the rest of his wonderful experiences,
but mysteries remain, and I think it makes him all the more fascinating. There is one little other thing I’d like to say. He was very
receptive to student brilliance, and there is a man here, with us
tonight, who wrote a thesis. Harry read it, and after the guy had
defended it, Harry looked at it, and said, “That man has courage
- he’s got what it takes”. That from Harry was the most tremendous compliment, and I’m still just wowed by the man. Thanks.
Transcribed by Rosemary Barker.
Hess in Washington, ~1967.
that he provided. This
was a daunting challenge for all of us, but
his message was clear
--- “you can all learn the
techniques on your own
if you have some guidance and are focused
on meeting the challenge”. Another memorable occasion was
the appearance of an
unusual invited speaker
in the Department. Immanuel Velikovsky had
published some truly
outrageous scientific
hypotheses in his attempts to explain some of the prevalent myths
of the ancient world by revising contemporary understanding of
archeology, geology, and astronomy. The grad students were ready
to ridicule Velikovsky and his ideas, but Harry introduced him
graciously, listened to him politely, and treated him courteously in
the ensuing discussion. Harry’s humility and respect for human
dignity set an example for all of us.
As with many of the other speakers, one the most important
influences Harry Hess had on my career was an appreciation of
the importance of integrating different scientific perspectives in the
quest to solve the fundamental problems of how the earth works.
I was privileged to have known him. <[email protected]>
Comments by Hugh Greenwood*60, faculty 1960-67, January
13, 2006
It is a privilege to offer a few comments on how Harry Hess
deeply affected my science and my life. After finishing a Master’s
degree at the University of British Columbia and working for a
year and a half as a mining geologist in Noranda, Quebec, I finally
decided I should look around for a graduate school. Like many
young graduates I applied to several schools, wondering if I would
ever be accepted, and to my surprise was apparently acceptable to
all. But the men I most wanted to work with were Harry Hess
and Arthur Buddington, so in the event the decision was easy.
Al Fischer, faculty 1956-84, comments on Harry Hess,
September 14, 2005
Harry basically loved mystery stories, and he liked to be
something of a mystery man. Many of you may recall some of
his conversations. He liked to tell stories. A story would start out
very straightforward; he would say: “You’re going to learn some
things here”, and then things would become slightly funny and
peculiar and, after awhile, they’d be perfectly preposterous, and
you would realize that he had been pulling your leg all along, and
the big challenge was where did he switch from fact to fancy? This
was impossible to tell, as he had rendered them so wonderfully.
There are many stories about Harry that are funny, peculiar, and
undocumented, and I wonder how many he invented, and how
many other people invented. There is the story that he did not
graduate from Geology at Yale, but from Electrical Engineering.
I don’t know if that’s true or not, but you could easily check up
on that, so that we would know the truth. Anyway, he came to
Princeton, having done a year’s fieldwork in Africa. They had no
base maps, they had nothing to work on, they were supposed to
sample an area for copper ore, but there were no outcrops in the
area. What they did, they had to determine true North, and then
lay out a grid for pace and compass traverses, and sample the
soil. Mostly they sampled ant heaps or termite heaps to get stuff.
Meanwhile Harry had applied to Princeton. The story goes, and
I have no way of checking on this, that the admissions committee
had sat down, and they had nine people, they had room for nine
and they had chosen eight, and number nine came along, and there
The Smilodon, a Web Supplement
What I didn’t know when I arrived was that he was an admiral in
the U.S. navy and was often away. It was hard to get his attention
even when he was at Guyot probably because he had a lot more on
his mind than the hopeful concerns of a new grad student. Eventually after a couple of months I was able to show him what I had
brought with me. I spread out my maps and specimens, filling the
entire laboratory with material that I thought would be my Ph.D.
thesis. There were some 300 carefully collected specimens, and
several large maps of the volcanic rocks of Lake Dufault Mines. I
was going to do the definitive study on volcanogenic ore deposits
of the shield. Finally, Professor Hess came to look at it. He stood
there and looked around smoking continuously for a good halfhour, and said “Very good, Greenwood,” a remark that puffed me
up considerably for a moment. But then he said, “But you can’t
do this for a thesis.” “Well, why not?” I asked. “You’ve done too
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July 1, 2006
Rabbit doodles by Harry Hess.
rine to get below the near surface zone disturbed by waves. They
convinced the US Navy of the value of this work and an ancient
First World War submarine was assigned to the project. The only
problem was that it was not possible for a civilian to give a submarine captain the orders that would be necessary for maneuvering
the vessel to make the measurements. The solution was for Harry
to join the navy. In those days it was the prerogative of senior US
admirals to simply create several commissioned officers by decree
each year. No previous experience necessary! An admiral was found
who had not used up his quota for the year and Harry instantly
became a junior officer in the navy. The final step was to find a
junior submarine commander with whom Harry would have equal
rank. During the marine gravity work Harry could then consult
with his civilian adviser and give navigation orders to the submarine
captain! I cannot vouch for the veracity of the tale but that is how
Harry told it.
Many of Harry’s stories related to his time in the Navy during
the Second World War. After the gravity work he had continued
in the naval reserve and undergone some formal training. After
Pearl Harbor (I think) he was called to full time duty.
At one stage he was in charge of an office that coordinated
intelligence on the movements of hostile submarines in the Atlantic. The information available was normally imprecise and
incomplete. Ideally it consisted of a location, a direction of travel,
and a speed. The aim was to judge what the enemy submarines
were up to and to warn allied convoys accordingly. He began by
choosing teams of applied mathematicians and physicists but that
was not a success because they felt that it was impossible to draw
any conclusions from such poor data and regarded the problems as
insoluble. After several experiments he ended up with a team that
was largely geologists who as he commented were “the only group
that was comfortable with making confident predictions on the
basis of terrible data”. If I remember rightly both Franklyn Van
Houten *41 and John Maxwell *46 were at various times in that
team. Harry used to smile wryly and comment on how highly his
unit was regarded by the Navy. He explained that if the convoys
encountered no submarines where predicted, it was assumed that
they were submerged, and if they did the prediction was accurate!
He also had comments on the relative effectiveness of German and
Italian submarines. He believed that because the Germans were very
efficient, once he had obtained a speed and a direction he knew
where they were going, and to that extent they were predictable.
The Italians, however, were by nature unpredictable and he claimed
that where they went depended on the weather and the inclination
of the captain, and he could never predict where they would turn
up and they were consequently more effective.
When he got a ship of his own he was able to interpret naval
orders and procedures in his own way. During the latter part of
much (already). Do something else.” Whereupon he wandered,
smoking, out of the lab.
The thing is, the man was right - he changed my life in a way
that I couldn’t have anticipated. He knew more about me than I
knew about myself, and he hardly knew me at that time.
I should bring this up too. There should be declared a new
physical law. There is a thermodynamic physical law called Hess’s
Law, but there is a more important Hess’s Law that I think we all
understand, and that is that all horizontal surfaces shall be covered
with paper to the angle of repose. Astonishingly Harry could always approach that pile, pause a moment, and dig into it to find
whichever journal article or letter that was needed. He must have
been maddening for secretaries but he was fascinating to the rest
of us.
In another way for me he was life-changing. At the point when I
had barely finished my thesis, and was employed, if you can believe
it, as a physical chemist at the Carnegie Geophysical Lab he called
up one day, and said “Let’s have dinner at the Cosmos Club.” “But
Harry, I’m not a member of the Cosmos Club, that’s only for the
elite.” Harry said, “Well, I’m a member, come and have dinner
and we can have a talk”. Well, we had dinner, and we had quite a
few glasses of this and that, and talked long into the night. I went
home, and said, “Sylvia, let’s start planning to pack up; I’m going
to be on the faculty at Princeton and I’ve got to go”.
Harry made good changes in many lives. He sized people up,
and made suggestions that seriously and beneficially affected the
way they conducted their lives. To me, he will always be a great
man. <[email protected]>
Some memories of Harry by Ron Oxburgh *60, Feb 26.
2006
There are three kind of Harry story – stories that Harry himself told about his past, stories about Harry, told first hand, and
stories that have been passed by word of mouth from generation
to generation of students becoming embellished on the way!
I will limit myself to the first two. Harry would tell his stories
either late in the evening over a Cuba Libre or during the interminable waits – they could be for almost anything - that tended
to be an inescapable feature of work in the Caribbean in the late
fifties.
I think that earliest chronologically was Harry’s account of how
he got into the navy. In the thirties he had become very interested
in the work of the Dutch geophysicist, Vening Meinesz who had
devised a way of making gravity measurements at sea. Harry convinced him of the value of making gravity measurements at sea
around deep ocean trenches and island arcs – both of which were
poorly known at the time. Accuracy was, however, poor and they
had the idea of improving the measurements by using a subma-
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7
July 1, 2006
Hess, circa 1945, in the Navy.
For the earlier years of the Caribbean project in Venezuela, the
country was under a fairly unpleasant military dictatorship and it
was very easy to be thrown in jail for the most trivial act. Harry
was put in jail by the police - I think only overnight - for walking
across the Plaza Bolivar without wearing a jacket. This was showing
disrespect to Simon Bolivar, the Liberator. When he pointed out
that others were not wearing jackets he was told that they did not
own jackets but would wear them if they had them. These were
trying times and the approach that Harry found was most effective for coping with officialdom was not to be able to speak any
Spanish at all but to be endlessly patient, smiling and seeming to
have no other wish in the world other than to oblige, if only he
could understand. On at least one occasion when stopped by the
traffic police and asked for his papers, he immediately responded
by opening the hood of the car and with gestures demonstrated
the motor. When they made it clear that they were not interested
in the motor he operated the lights and showed them that they all
worked; then the trunk. Then he opened his suitcase and started
taking out his possessions. When they made it clear that they were
not interested, he took them round to the front of the car and
opened the hood once more. At that point they threw their hands
in the air and gave him up as a harmless lunatic and went to look
for bribes elsewhere.
My first encounter with Harry was in 1957. I traveled from the
UK to Trinidad by banana boat and thence to Venezuela. After I’d
been a few weeks in the field with Gordie Taylor *60 in Margarita,
Harry arrived in the course of his annual Caribbean tour. We met
up in Caracas and then headed for the Araya peninsula, which was
a potential thesis area for me. There was no land access to the peninsula, an arid desert, and the only approach was by sea. For us this
meant a trip of several hours in small and stinking wooden fishing
boat. The outward trip was calm and easy and gave us a very hot
and thirsty day in the field. In the evening, however, a storm blew
up and the return trip was memorable. The problem was that it
was necessary to carry a number of large rocks in the bottom of the
boat for ballast. The boat rose to the crest of each large wave and
then crashed down into the next trough followed a moment later
by the rocks which showed every sign of going straight through
the rotting planks of the bottom. Harry simply sat in the stern,
chain smoking and watching the rocks with philosophical calm.
Subsequently he confided that he too had thought that we would
not make it to land.
One winter in the early sixties (?1961/62) Harry was invited to
come to the UK to speak at the annual British Geology Students’
meeting—sadly it no longer happens. It was being held in Cambridge that year and I traveled from Oxford to hear what he had
to say. It was breath-taking—one of the first, if not the first, public
expositions of sea-floor spreading, complete with the seams on the
baseball analogy to explain the topology of ridges and trenches. Sir
Edward Bullard who was Professor of Geophysics in Cambridge
at the time had been invited to give the vote of thanks. He had
not liked the talk. He was of the Harold Jeffrey’s school and was
absolutely clear that if the Earth had the elastic properties necessary
to explain its seismic structure, it had to be too strong to admit
of the kind of motions Hess was suggesting. In his speech he
thanked Professor Hess for his most interesting talk but confessed
to being unsure whether it owed more to the science of Physics or
Metaphysics! Only a few years later Bullard had Alan Smith *63
the Pacific war he normally
cruised with his acoustic
depth sounder continuously pinging the sea floor.
The rationale was that no
military vessel would be
crazy enough to announce
its presence by doing this
and that everyone would
think that he was a noncombatant survey vessel.
This allowed him to accumulate a many thousands
of miles of surveyed tracks
that ultimately saw the light
of day in his seminal paper
on the bathymetry of the
Pacific that was published in Bulletin of the GSA in 1948. The captain’s
eccentricities became well known on the ship and all understood that
he was interested in rocks. His crew did indeed bring him rocks even
to the extent of grabbing rocks from the beaches of Pacific islands
where they had been landing forces under fire!
At some stage his ship’s crew had acquired a jeep, which made
life on shore a lot easier. Ultimately this jeep reached the end of its
serviceable existence and was more trouble than it was worth. The
problem was that it was logged as part of the ship’s equipment and
they could find no way of disposing of it in any way that would
satisfy the bureaucrats. Finally Harry had it pushed over the side
of the ship. It was then recorded as sunk, an acceptable way of
ending the life of a piece of naval equipment!
He used to horrify the captains of fuelling tenders while refueling at sea. The conventional technique was apparently for both
vessels to sail on nearly parallel converging courses and then to
cruise at speed, close together, while the fuelling bowsers were connected and to remain that way until the operation was complete.
Collisions were common. The captain of the ship being refueled
always directed the operation and Harry’s approach was to order
the tender to come to a dead stop while he did the same with his
ship along side but several hundred feet away. He then sent bow
and stern lines across to the tender and winched his ship sideways
until the two ships were alongside and the fuel lines connected.
Not very elegant, he admitted, but he never had a mishap.
Scientifically, he said that his greatest excitement arose from
an idea and some calculations that were totally wrong. After his
discovery of guyots he did a calculation that suggested (in a presea floor spreading era) that the different heights of the erosional
guyot tops reflected the progressive filling of the ocean basins with
land-derived sediment; the deepest were oldest and had been eroded
at a time when the oceans were less full of sediment and sea-level
was lower. I don’t know whether this was ever published.
As a salutary tale about not paying enough attention to detail,
he described how for years he had been aware of certain discrepancies in the x-ray data that he was accumulating on pyroxenes, and
had simply chosen to ignore it as experimental error, improbably
large though it was. Much too late, in his view, he recognized that
he had been seeing the difference between othopyroxenes and
clinopyroxenes.
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8
July 1, 2006
working on fits of the continental margins! In the UK at that time
central heating was not common and that winter was exceptionally
cold. Harry was staying at the home of the Cambridge Professor of
Geology, Bulman, the graptolite specialist. I asked him whether he
was comfortable. He hesitated and then said that his bedroom was
on the cool side—“you know if you touch the walls your fingers
stick.”
At the end of my second field season in Venezuela I returned to
Princeton in the Fall and Ursula came out from the UK and we
got married in the Princeton Chapel. It was a great departmental
wedding but that is another story. Of course Harry was there and
was due to propose the health of the bride and groom. The only
problem was that in the chapel Annette spotted that he was wearing the jacket from a blue suit and the pants from a brown one
so he was sent home to change before the reception at the Dick
Holland ‘47’s house!
In 1959 some Shell geologists organised a field trip in the Venezuelan Coast Ranges. They had been working in a region adjacent
to that which I was mapping and Harry and I were invited to join
them. It had been an interesting but long day and, unusually, we
had encountered a number of barbed wire fences. There were several
very polite Swiss in the party and a ritual developed according to
which one of the party would rush forward to hold the strands apart
so that the rest of the party could crouch through. One member of
the party, H, stood out; he was a man totally devoid of any sense
of humour but invaluable before the days of data bases because he
simply knew everything that had been written about South American geology. Right at the end of the day we came across a fence that
we could walk across because it had fallen down on its side where
the posts had rotted at the bottom. On this occasion Harry, who
had not previously participated in the ritual, ran forward grabbed
the fence and picking it up held the strands apart for H who was
at the front of the party. H duly started to step through the fence
but half way through he stopped dead and then looked up at Harry
and said, ‘But Professor we could have walked over this one.’ The
rest of the party was incapable with mirth for about ten minutes.
Harry’s mineralogy lectures were probably the worst classes that
I ever attended. They consisted of Harry’s writing semi-legibly on
the black board and muttering incomprehensibly with his back to
the class and a cigarette in his mouth. In a curious way they were
extremely effective because what became clear from those mutterings that we could interpret, and the words on the board that we
could read, was that there were various topics that we were supposed to understand but of which we had no comprehension. As
consequence we all went away and studied furiously and ended up
quite competent mineralogists.
Harry’s smoking was legendary. One wrinkle that I learned very
early—from Gordie Taylor I think—was that Harry could only
think when he was smoking. This meant that if you were taking
him to a really complex outcrop where you needed his help, it
was essential to make sure that you had matches and a carton of
Chesterfields in your pack. You knew that if you ran out of either,
Harry would first lapse into silence and shortly afterwards suggest
that it was time to go back! He loved maps whether in the office or
in the field and loved to gaze at them and ponder their significance.
This was a highly tobacco-intensive activity. He would normally
have one cigarette alight. He would then need to put this down
to open up the map. He would then find something to hold the
The Smilodon, a Web Supplement
map flat to free his hands to light another cigarette. He would then
need to point something out and put the second cigarette down
etc. etc.—it was not uncommon to see him surrounded by four
cigarettes alight at one time.
I was at the time, and continue to be, astonished by the way in
which Harry could carry in his head the details of so much Caribbean stratigraphy. His summer Caribbean trips lasted four or
five weeks as he visited his various students distributed around the
islands or on the mainland of Venezuela. Astonishingly he seemed
to be able to shift overnight from one geological scenario to another
and instantly recall and then discuss the excruciating details of
stratigraphy to which his graduate students exposed him.
Although some of his students were accompanied in the field by
their wives others were not. After his visiting his students Harry
always made a point of somehow coming across the wives who were
back in Princeton for the summer and giving them first hand news
of their husbands’ progress, It was much appreciated. Equally at
the tenser time of thesis writing, he would from time to time have
a word with the wives who as often as not were doing the typing.
My wife Ursula recalls one such occasion when she was suffering
from my waxing lyrical about the amazing colours of the rocks
which all looked grey to her. She asked him whether the rocks
were really like that. The reply was “Don’t worry, I never read the
colours in their theses!” <[email protected]>
Reminiscences of Harry Hess by Eldridge Moores *63, December 28, 2005
Harry Hess was one of the most influential and memorable
individuals I have ever met. His personal invitation was perhaps
the single most important factor tipping the scales in favor of my
attending Princeton. My first encounter with him occurred when
I first arrived. Miss Law escorted me into his office, and I was nonplussed. There was the famous man surrounded by stacks of paper
and clouds of cigarette smoke, looking up of sleepily, and saying
something like “Oh, hullo Moores.” I said something like “Thanks
for all you have done for me”. And his response was something
akin to “Well, we hope to do a lot more”. It was an unusual and
warming experience for someone fresh out of the super pressure
cooker of Caltech.
Hess was a quiet lecturer.
He was not particularly dynamic or even well organized.
But one soon learned to
listen carefully. Similarly, in
a conversational situation,
when Harry started to speak,
one learned to stop and listen
carefully, because he would
invariably say something
fresh and worth listening to.
My field experiences with
Hess began with an adventurous summer in Haiti followed by a month in Jamaica.
Three students—Martand
Hess trimming a specimen, Magnetigorsk, USSR, 1937. Photo by A. F.
Buddington.
9
July 1, 2006
As I was finishing my thesis in Nevada, I heard from John Maxwell about a project on a northern Greek ophiolite. I convinced
John and Harry to let me have a crack at it, although Hess at
the time took a dim view of the interpretation of a close relationship between the peridotites and extrusive rocks of the ophiolitic
suite—thinking instead that they were independent. I traveled to
Greece in Summer, 1963, returning to the US in October, 1964.
Hess and Maxwell paid me a visit in Summer 1964, along with
Don Wise *57 and Ron Oxburgh *60. Maxwell, Hess and I
subsequently visited several Italian ophiolite exposures. We received
a letter from Hess after the trip, thanking us, in his usual humble
way, for the trip, and saying that he now believed the ophiolite story.
The following year he published an article in the Colston Research
volume relating ophiolites to ocean crust formed by spreading.
Harry took a liking to the local wine of northern Greece, so
when I left, I bought him a bottle from the restaurant—it was 75¢
for 1 1/2 liters, with a rag in the top, but with a 50¢ deposit on
the bottle. I found a cork, but I expect that by the time my trunk
returned to Princeton, it was well converted to vinegar.
As I was writing up the Greek work, I ran onto the Memoirs
of the Cyprus Geological Survey. The Troodos complex, Cyprus,
looked like a possibility for ocean crust formed by sea floor spreading. After a two-day reconnaissance with John Dickey *69 in
Summer, 1966, I wrote a report to Hess and Maxwell about it.
Apparently the report convinced Fred Vine, faculty 1965-69, that
it was a place worth looking into. He approached Hess and asked
to take a look at it, but Harry apparently thought that it wasn’t
worth his effort. Vine came to me and suggested that we look at
it together. We went to Hess with this proposition, and he gave
his blessing. With a year’s delay because of political difficulties,
Fred and I went to Cyprus in Summer 1968. My wife Judy and
14-month-old daughter Geneva accompanied me.
On the way back from Cyprus, Judy and I (and Geneva) stopped
off in Princeton. I went to see Hess. When he learned that my
family was with me, he told me firmly to bring them around to his
house late that afternoon. As we walked in the door, Harry barely
looked at Judy and me; he focused solely on our toddler, saying
“Hello, let’s go get some toys.” The two of them disappeared while
Annette entertained Judy and me for over an hour. Harry and
Geneva eventually emerged with her calmly munching a cookie.
We all have our Hess stories, and mine are just as numerous,
funny, and fun to relate as others. But despite the terrible overcommitment that Hess experienced, I was impressed that he on
several times showed a sensitivity and concern for graduate students
who were not his own. For example, one point in Haiti, he asked
me about Alan Smith *63, who had met his future wife Judy, and
whether it was the right thing for him to do. I assured him that
Judy was a fine person, and he seemed relieved.
Harry was not always tuned into the “real world.” On one of
our visits to the Hess home, Annette told us that on the way home
from Europe, she had realized that Harry’s smallpox vaccination
was out of date. So she made a point of looking for someone who
might be forgiving. She spotted a burly fellow at one immigration
counter who sported a big anchor tattoo on his arm. So she steered
Harry to his line. The man said, “Well, Admiral, you have a little
irregularity here, but we’ll keep it in the Navy family,” and waved
them through.
We all thought at the time that Hess was perhaps the one geolo-
Hess in his office circa 1960.
Joshi *63, Bill MacDonald *65, and I went to Haiti together,
spent about 6 weeks, and then picked up Harry in Port-au-Prince
and toured the areas in which we had done reconnaissance—mainly
in the north. Arriving back in Port-au-Prince with a day to spare,
we decided to drive to the south coast. Many hours later (one
could average about 10 mph on Haitian roads), we came late in the
afternoon to a critical point—a bulldozer parked on a tight curve
with a soft shoulder high up on a hill, and luckily, the first other
vehicle we had seen that afternoon—a Haitian Army Jeep with an
officer negotiating his own vehicle past the barrier using the locals
(about 50-100 of which would appear out of the bush whenever
you stopped). We did the same thing. But we were “blancs”, and
“Papa Doc” had recently made an anti-American speech. As we
got back into the vehicle, Hess quietly said between puffs of his
cigarette, “I think you’d better get going (puff ). These fellows have
machetes (puff ) and it looks like they are going to use them”. We
got out of there pronto. Reaching the local town, we forded the
mouth of the river (with Hess directing us to disconnect the fan
belt first), found a gas station, and had dinner at the local hotel.
At 8 PM, we started back for Port-au-Prince so Harry could catch
his plane the next day. It took us over 6 hours to make the 60 miles
back to our hotel. This involved some 50-75 fords of a Bilharziascontaining stream, during two of which we drowned the engine.
After the first drowning (I was driving), for a moment there was
dead silence in the vehicle. The only lights were from lightning in
the mountains ahead, and the tip of Harry’s cigarette. I climbed
out, dried off the spark plugs with my handkerchief, the Jeep
started right up, and off we went. Arriving back about 2:30 AM
at the hotel’s self-service outdoor bar, Harry said, “I think we’d
better have a drink” “And make it a strong one.” He took a long
draft, put it down, and said, “I don’t think you should work in
the Southern Peninsula.” As we were driving Harry to the airport,
past one of the most horrible seaside slums anyone can imagine,
Harry suddenly brightly announced “I know just what these people
need—a brassiere factory. It would give them something to do, and
it would give every woman a lift!”
We spent a few days more in northern Haiti, while Harry wrote
a hand-written penciled letter to the head of the Geological Survey
in Jamaica, informing him he was sending two students to work
there. Martand Johsi and I went to Jamaica, while Bill MacDonald went to the Dominican Republic as a field assistant for Curry
Palmer *63. I would have continued working in Jamaica except
for family problems—and I always regretted it, once telling Harry
so. I think that he forgave me.
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10
July 1, 2006
taking it again. This was the Fall of 1963 and all the evidence and
concepts supporting sea-floor spreading were presented to us with
chalkboard, grubby slides and the ever-present cigarette. Harry
Hess didn’t appear to prepare his lectures fastidiously. He knew
what he wanted to tell us and came armed with enough slides to
get the ideas across. He wasn’t dogmatic or strongly assertive, but
he was powerfully persuasive. In fact, he did not introduce the
term ‘sea-floor spreading” into the literature. Bob Dietz did, in
1961, in a short and sketchily documented paper in Nature that
he wrote after having some discussions with Harry. According to
graduate student scuttlebutt, Harry’s colleagues were incensed and
wanted an editorial showdown immediately, but Harry apparently
responded, no doubt in his quiet drawl: “Don’t bother, it’s probably
all wrong anyway.”
True or not, his reported response has remained with me to this
day and has been a huge source of inspiration. He bore Bob Dietz
no ill will, indeed they were good friends, and he was always aware
that a hypothesis was just that. It was no more or less than the best
explanation that you could envisage to account for the available
data at the time, and new data, or better insights, could rapidly
displace your “good idea.”
Fred Nagle *67 knew him far better than I did and said that,
when faced with a problem, he would often ask himself: “What
would Harry do?” Fred also dared tease him, something I was too
shy to attempt. Fred told me of one evening in the Dominican
Republic, when Harry had been enjoying Cuba Libres and became
quite boastful about his time in the Navy during the War. He was
particularly proud of the speed at which he could leap out of his
bunk and get his clothes on when the order to report to “General
Quarters” was blasted over the cabin loud speakers. Fred decided
to verify this claim. The following morning, while Harry was still
asleep, Fred entered his bedroom with a saucepan and a geological
hammer, and while he beat the one with the other, he screamed:
“General Quarters, General Quarters” as loud as he could. Harry
apparently leapt from his bed and was about to throw off his
pajamas, when he realised Fred was standing in front of him. He
was not amused. “Don’t you ever do that again, Fred.” But the
visit was a success. Harry did not engage in much fieldwork during his lifetime, but he
had an instinctive feel
for it. It was more than a
three-dimensional sense
of rock relationships;
rather it was an intuitive
understanding of what
was most likely. Fred is
no longer with us. If he
were, he would tell of
how Harry sorted out
his field studies after a
day of visiting apparently unrelated outcrops.
“When are you going
to show me a rock that
gist who had mastered the entire field of geology. In addition, he
was humorous, compassionate, unassuming, and humble. A truly
inspiring person. <[email protected]>
Bill Barnes *63 Remembers, January 30, 2006
I used to walk to Guyot with Harry in the evening sometimes, as
we were both Owls rather than Larks at the time. I can’t remember
much of our conversations and indeed there was very little of that,
anyway. I do remember something about his not being able to digest
milk as a baby and having beer in his bottle instead! I’m not sure if I
got that directly from Harry or if it was just a story floating around
about him at the time. It does sound apocryphal! What I most
remember from the mineralogy course I took from Harry when
I first arrived at Princeton is that he always had a lighted cigarette
going in both ash trays at the ends of the demonstration bench in
the lecture room, plus another between his lips. I remember the
bemused look on his face when he would pick up one from an
ash tray and try to put it into his mouth, only to realize there was
already one there. As grad students we were used to him being a
few minutes late for lectures, but when, as was often the case, he
didn’t show up after 10 minutes or so, one of us would go and ask
Miss Law where he was, only to find out that he was in Caracas
or Washington or wherever! <[email protected]>
Reminiscences of Harry Hess by Sebastian Bell *67, December
5, 2005
I think I was the only soft rock geologist who had Harry Hess
as his supervisor at Princeton. This was not my original intention
and certainly not his! My entry into Princeton’s graduate program
was smoothed by Ron Oxburgh *60, who inspired me to apply
from Oxford, introduced me to Al Fischer (who was to nurture my
growing interest in paleontology) and must have written enough
to Harry for me to find myself on the “short list.” Harry sent me
a brief air letter containing an offer of a Teaching Assistantship
and asked me to let him know my decision quickly as there were
others waiting in the wings. Naturally, I wrote back affirmatively
as soon as I had informed Ron Oxburgh and Professor Wager
(who performed a happy pirouette at the news—his wife was a
former ballet dancer).
In September 1963, Miss Law steered me into Harry’s office.
He was standing behind mounds of unshelved books, some open,
some on his desk but many on the floor around it, and was wearing tan canvass trousers and an open necked shirt. I was somewhat
taken aback. On field trips, at lectures, and even when pirouetting,
Professor Wager had always worn a three-piece suit and tie. “Have
you got any problems?” Harry asked and I didn’t know what to
say. Did he mean physical disabilities, or perhaps psychological
shortcomings? But he was reassured when I told him I was living
in the Graduate College. “I’ve put you in my old office, 505, in
the Tower. You’ll be with two Canadians (Roger Macqueen *65
and Pete Temple *65)—they’ll look after you.” I acquired a bicycle a few days later and passed Harry on a corner along Prospect
Avenue. He waved to me and said “Hi there, Sebastian.” I must
have responded in some manner, but certainly not spontaneously.
English professors didn’t wave at their students and would never
have said “Hi”.
Roger and Pete introduced me to the Geology Department at
Princeton and told me about the course that Harry taught for
the new graduate students. It was fantastic and they would be
The Smilodon, a Web Supplement
Annette, George, and Harry.
October 1939. Photo courtesy
of George Hess.
11
July 1, 2006
Harry, Annette, Ontario, 1956
Photo courtesy of George Hess.
reconnaissance mapping of the much of the Coast Range foothills
several years previously. I learned from Jake that road cuts were
a waste of time and that mapping freshly eroded rocks along the
streams and rivers was the only way to go. Moreover, as Harry no
doubt knew, Creole had the best base maps of my area and I was
soon supplied with them. By the end of the summer, Billy and I had
mapped a 5 kilometre wide cross section through the Camatagua
area, aided in no small part by a much more reliable Jeep.
Harry encouraged us to discuss our theses with others, and being
part of the Caribbean Project meant that there were several fellow
graduate students grappling with geologically related problems.
Visiting speakers were hoisted on us as well. He urged Bill MacDonald *65 to invite Warren Carey to dine with us at the Graduate
College one evening saying that he and Annette needed a night
off!
Realising that my Spanish was still even worse than my early
attempts to map the Coast Range Foothills, Harry arranged for
one of Princeton’s geology undergraduates, Mike Robinson ’66,
to assist me in the field in 1965. Mike was from Texas and Spanish
was his second language. He also suggested that we should consider
living in San Juan de los Morros. The town had better facilities
than San Sebastian, where Billy Otalora had (unknowingly at the
time) arranged for us to rent the former village brothel as our field
camp. Harry was right. We ate better in San Juan and found an
English-speaking Trinidadian mechanic to service our Jeep.
Harry came down that summer and I drove into Caracas to
meet him. As always, he stayed at the Hotel El Conde and the
next morning we walked down to the Centro Simon Bolivar and
took the lift to the 19th floor of the Torre Norte, where the Direccion de Geologia of the Ministerio de Minas e Hidrocarburos was
housed.
Alberto Vivas was Director and Alirio Bellizzia the Head of the
Geological Survey. Both men held Harry in the highest regard and
it was touching to see with what great delight and effusive friendliness they greeted him. They hung on his words, as did Alirio’s
geologist wife Cecilia. After he had left, they would repeat what he
had said and reverentially restate his opinions. Everybody respected
him and loved him too. During those days we also visited Victor
Lopez, former Director of the Servicio Technico, forerunner of the
Direccion de Geologia. He was then a Professor in the Geology
Department of the University of Caracas. Victor received us in a
huge boardroom with a long table down the middle. This was apparently his desk for he sat at its head with a secretary on his left
hand. Victor had, in a past life, amassed millions taking options on
property in Caracas and then reselling them to the Perez Jimenez
administration for freeway construction. A bid to overthrow the
next Government landed him in jail and he was now making a
comeback. Victor Lopez spoke with a complete lack of deference
and most pompously to Harry, who let it all slide off his back
and treated him as graciously as he did everyone else. As we left,
Harry shook his head. “Victor once offered to make me Minister
of Mines here. He was going to be President in a week or two he
said, but I told him it wouldn’t work – I had classes to teach back
in Princeton.”
Harry took me with him to Shell where I heard him explain
paleomagnetism to their Chief Geologist. In a few sentences he
told him what it was, what it had achieved, what it might do and
why Shell probably didn’t need it. This was not Harry Hess, the
is in place, Fred?” Fred was
mapping an olistostrome!
My original thesis
intentions evaporated as
1963 and 1964 unfolded
at Princeton. The lure of
paleontology lessened as I
became more enamored of
structural geology and sedimentology. There was the
possibility of a thesis in the
foothills of the Venezuelan
Coast Ranges. “It’s south of
Robin Harvey *64’s area,
“ Harry told me. “There’s
turbidites there.” However,
Ron Flemal *67 had first
claim on it. But then he
switched and went to California to study red beds with Van
Houten, and the Camatagua Area was mine.
Well, it was not quite mine! Harry realised that I couldn’t manage
on my own with no Spanish, so he lined up Billy Otalora as my field
assistant. Billy was Colonel Otalora’s son and therein lies another
story of Harry’s sensitive philanthropy. Guillermo Otalora *61
had quit the Colombian army and come to Princeton in middle
age at Harry’s invitation, and there he had completed first an undergraduate degree and then a Ph.D in Geology. Otalora brought
his family with him plus, I suspect, some Colombian funds, but
not enough to sustain them all reasonably. He was effectively in
exile due to his being at bitter odds with the Government of the
day. Harry provided him with support, a home and a new purpose
in life. After finishing his doctorate, and with no change in the
regime in Bogota, the Colonel stayed on at Princeton x-raying
rocks that were likely to be found on the Moon. Harry acquired
an NSF grant for this work and he assigned it to the Colonel.
Apart from Billy Otalora, Harry provided me with a cheque for
1000 bolivars written on a Caracas bank that he said contained
Caribbean Project funds. I didn’t need it, which was fortunate,
because all the ink on it dissolved one afternoon when I and my
wallet fell into the Rio Guarico!
Before the summer of 1964 was over, Harry was in Venezuela
visiting me and Billy, as well as Ben Morgan *67 and Judy Morgan.
Initially, we traveled to other parts of the Coast Ranges. Harry had
arranged for Alfredo Menendez *62 to take us to see the Tiramuto
Volcanics that he was now interpreting as a klippe of Villa de Cura.
The Villa de Cura Group was a widespread volcanic terrain that
was suspected by then to be allochthonous. When Harry visited
my field area, I was keen to show him that I was not floundering.
We progressed along the main road examining tropically weathered sediments that I thought must be metamorphosed and which
displayed a disappointing lack of sedimentary structures.
Harry did not comment on my approach or my interpretations.
He was more concerned that our Jeep be replaced by a better one
and wanted to make sure that the area was mappable. “You should
talk to Jake Pierson,” he said and took me back to Caracas to meet
him. Jake worked for Creole, Esso’s affliliate, and had undertaken
The Smilodon, a Web Supplement
12
July 1, 2006
terminated the proceedings early, saying that he had to get over
to the Registrar’s office before it closed to “make sure these people
get their degrees”.
In May of 1969, Harry wrote and asked me to introduce two
new graduate students to the Venezuelan Coast Ranges that summer. Support was, of course, provided and I did it with pleasure.
Then, in August, I learned of his death. Ben Morgan *67 sent me a
beautiful letter describing the memorial service and a visit he made
to Harry’s office to say his own farewell. The next year my wife
Jill and I were in Princeton on our way to Venezuela. We visited
Annette Hess in the new house that they had recently moved into.
The living room carpet was somewhat worn and had been with
them for many years. Annette told us that Harry had walked up
and down it pondering the implications of seafloor spreading.
To have been one of Harry Hess’s graduate students was a colossal privilege and an honour that I cherish to this day. He was
the most caring of men, often horribly overworked and over-committed, yet always concerned for our welfare, and he was a person
of genuine humility. I am sure this is what made him the great
scientist that he was. There was no space in his life for ego-tripping,
but as much room as he could make for amassing information and
attempting to place it in a logical context. He lived in an age that
did not demand constant publication and so what he wrote was
timely, relevant and not repetitive. What he did not write often
came out in conversation and, as he would have wished, frequently
took flight in the publications of others. In this way he is still with
us and, hopefully, with some of our students and collaborators.
<[email protected]>
often ponderous lecturer of Guyot Hall, this was a quietly brilliant
man who was comfortably astride a field that was not his own. He
enjoyed these visits to oil companies. but they were a necessary duty
because, in this way, he reported to the companies who supported
the Caribbean Project and collected their annual contributions.
He made sure that they all received copies of the Princeton theses
and had opportunities to meet their authors.
There was also part of an afternoon spent in the company of
Guillermo Zuloaga, then in the twilight of his career, but who had
known Harry since the nineteen thirties. Guillermo mentioned
contracting bilharzia (liver flukes) and how it had made him incredibly sleepy. But he’d been cured, although the treatment wasn’t nice.
There was little discussion of the Coast Ranges, which Zuloaga
had been one of the first geologists to interpret seriously; instead
he and Harry talked about the climate of the Caracas Valley which
he was now studying.
In San Juan de los Morros, we booked Harry into the best hotel
and it was there that he told me he was resigning the Chairmanship
of the Geology Department and that John Maxwell would be taking over. Without thinking, I said: “Oh Harry. I am so glad,” and
immediately wondered how he would take that, and if I should
explain that I meant I was happy that he would no longer have
to bear the strain of running the department. There was no need;
he knew what I meant. He nodded and said: “Me too.” I cannot
recall exactly what we looked at in the field that summer. Probably,
we visited the serpentinites along the northern border of the map
area. Harry made it clear that he thought all was going well.
In January 1966, I went into Caracas to deliver my final monthly
report to Alirio Bellizzia and to get my map drafted. I learned to
my surprise that Harry was there. I’ve no idea why he had flown
down and he didn’t tell me. Maybe he felt he needed a break and
wanted to sit again in the calm shade of the Plaza Bolivar. I shared
with him my fear that I had contracted bilharzia. I was often very
sleepy. Both he and Alirio Bellizzia agreed that I probably had
ingested liver flukes and they arranged for me to take tests at the
Hospital in the University of Caracas. I would be back in the States
before the results would be known, but would be informed of them.
Harry promised that he’d arrange for me to get all the treatment
I needed. Shortly after I returned to Princeton, he called me into
his office and showed me a cable stating that I had no symptoms
whatever!
Before leaving Venezuela, I encountered Victor Lopez in a corridor in the Direccion de Geologia. “Tell Hess,” he said, “that I will
be in Princeton next week.” I did and Harry replied. “I hope he
doesn’t come. He’s such an old windbag these days.” Victor didn’t
show up.
Harry never hassled his students. He left us to get on with our
research and with writing up our work, but he was always ready
to discuss an idea, or proffer advice if asked. He was anxious for
us to be successful and insisted that Mike Piburn *67 return to
Venezuela for three weeks to tie up some loose ends before finalising
his thesis. He knew I would need a job and encouraged me to go
to the GSA meeting in San Francisco in the Fall of 1966 to present
myself to potential employers. He gave me a cheque for $300 for
the trip and I’m sure it was written on his own account.
I defended my thesis on a Friday afternoon in May 1967 at the
end of a week when Mike Piburn and Walter Alvarez *67 had
also presented their research. I had the easiest time because Harry
The Smilodon, a Web Supplement
Further from Sebastian Bell *67, regarding Hess, January 21,
2006
Thanks for doing a Readers Digest job on my text. I’m looking
forward to seeing the Smilodon issue. I hope someone has described
Harry arriving at Maiquetia Airport with a suitcase full of baby
things for Jess Bushman *58’s wife and their newborn child. Her
mother had asked Harry to take them down and he told her to
put them in a safety deposit box at Grand Central station and send
him the key (which in that era was considered a perfectly reasonable thing to do!). So Harry didn’t know what was in the bag and
no doubt was as surprised as the Customs Officer who lifted out
diapers and nursing brassieres. As he did so, he
enquired of Harry: “Por
la senora?” As you know,
Harry had little small
talk, so he just shook his
head and said “No.” The
Customs Officer looked
Harry over and a gleam
came into his eye. He
slapped him on the back
and offered him the ultimate compliment: “Che
hombre!” I cannot remember who it was who
Harry Hess, Northern Rhodesia, 1928-29. Photo courtesy of
George Hess.
13
July 1, 2006
Harry Hess and Annette
Burns, wedding picture,
1934. Photo courtesy of
George Hess.
given Emmons’s Memoir and a couple of hours you can use the Ustage anytime you want”. Sure enough, in later years when I had to
do some petrofabric work, I picked up Emmons and after a couple
of hours did just that. Later, when teaching my students how to
use the U-stage, I would tell them this Harry story without going
through his song and dance. That was type-locality of Harry’s lab
teaching, a low key way of showing how to do it yourself, all with
a twinkle in his eye.
The other set of examples involves the last of Harry’s many scientific endeavors, namely the space science program and plans for
exploration of the moon. As a member of the National Academy of
Sciences, he chaired the Space Science Board, an advisory committee to NASA and Congress on scientific aspects of the overall lunar
program. A National Academy administrative secretary took care of
the details but Harry chaired and “ran” all the meetings. His basic
problem was riding herd on a group of strong-minded engineers,
politicians, physicists, chemists and the like, none of whom knew
a thing about field work in general and certainly not how to apply
such concepts to geologic exploration of another planetary body.
He needed some additional committee voices with a bit of field
experience. During the early 60’s, Harry had encouraged and supported me in fighting through to publication of a paper proposing
origin of the moon by fission from the earth. Probably because of
this and through Harry’s intervention I ended up as a field geologist sitting on that board as Harry tried to keep some semblance
of sanity and balance between science and engineering. Through
much of the later part of the 1960’s I was privileged to watch and
occasionally help as Harry chaired these critical meetings.
A typical meeting would go something like this. About nine
o’clock we would convene around a huge table and Harry would
say “Well, we’ve got a problem here. Uh, Smith from NASA will
tell you all about it.” With that Harry slumped down in his chair,
while Smith started to go through a big stack of view graphs. At the
table Harry sat with eyes mostly closed, stirring periodically to light
another cigarette. After Smith, we were treated to additional view
graphs and complexities from Jones from JPL, and so on. About
noon Harry said, “Well, I guess we better break for lunch. We’ll
meet back here at one.” The afternoon was spent discussing and
arguing about the problems raised by Smith and Jones. Typically
these involved selecting instruments to go on spacecraft, evaluating proposals and investigators, picking target sites on the moon
and the like. The basic problem in those days was that NASA had
grandiose exploration plans, most of which were ill conceived
from an exploration viewpoint or far beyond the practical limits of
dollars or time. On the scientific side, many were determined that
their particular discipline or instrument had to be at the heart of
the exploration. Harry’s function was to maintain some common
sense in the middle of a dream world of engineering possibilities
and unrealistic demands of some famous but lab-only scientists.
All this took place as Harry would sit there apparently half asleep.
By about 4 o’clock it was obvious that we were at a complete impasse. Then Harry’s quiet voice would break in. “Look-it. These
are the facts: this, this, and this. What you really want to do are
this and this. The different groups will react in these ways with
this timetable. A recommendation probably should be such and
such.” There would be dead silence for about a minute while reality
sank in and it became obvious that this was exactly what should
be done. There would be a 15-minute discussion of how the of-
came to meet Harry
and witnessed this
event! I think Ben
Morgan told me the
story first, but I heard
it repeated several
times. Of course, it
is possible no one
from Princeton saw
this happen and Harry himself was the
source!
Some Harry Hess
tales by Don Wise
*57, January 19,
2006
Harry’s lectures were rarely well organized. Commonly they
were a smorgasbord of miscellaneous data and ideas delivered in a
quietly humorous monotone, punctuated with cigarette lightings
and occasional absent-minded attempts to light the chalk. Rumor
has it that he once put a cigarette into his pocket instead of the
chalk resulting in a minor coat fire. Nevertheless, the superb content
of those lectures periodically included some of the most brilliant
observations and ideas of our time and more than compensated
for his sleep-inducing style of delivery.
One memorable “lecture” occurred in his graduate mineralogy
course when Harry “taught” us how to use the universal stage to
get feldspar composition. It went something like this, as delivered
with a slight mumble across a cigarette drooping from his lower
lip., “Well, we’re gonna do the universal stage today; we’ve got the
microscope here; if you look in the top here, you can focus the
eyepiece; it’s a long tube made out of brass; the light comes in the
bottom here with a mirror so you can adjust it, and you have this
universal stage here; it’s got five axes; you can rotate it here and
here, and so on, this way, that way”. This went on for about half an
hour, and then: “Once you have the thin section mounted, bring
a feldspar crystal to extinction; then use this axis to get a second
extinction. Read off those two angles and then use the Emmons
Universal Stage Memoir to get the composition of the feldspar. Do
that for these slides for lab when I get back next week. Uh, does
anyone have a car here. I have to catch a train at the Princeton station in ten minutes?” And he was gone—that was it ! We all spent
the next week sweating blood, trying to read Emmons and learn
how the whole U-stage procedure worked. When Harry got back
the next week, a very tired group of grad students had mastered
basic use of the U-stage and turned in their results.
About ten years later, Harry, John Maxwell, and I were visiting
Eldridge Moores *63 to look over his thesis area in Greece. We
were having a relaxed dinner after dark on a rooftop Greek restaurant when I finally got up enough courage to ask, “Harry, what
in the heck was going on with that lecture you gave us about the
U-Stage. It seemed to be absolute nonsense?” He laughed, and said
“You know, if I had described it in detail, you would have thought
I taught you how to use the stage. What you really learned was that
The Smilodon, a Web Supplement
14
July 1, 2006
Hess at Asbestus, Siberia, 1937.
Photo by A. F. Buddington
ficial recommendation should be worded, a vote was taken and
the meeting adjourned. In most of these meetings, Harry would
have said the fewest words of anyone in the room but exercised
the greatest influence on what was ultimately decided.
Working through the Space Science Board, Harry had a major
scientific influence on the Ranger, Orbiter, and Surveyor series of
spacecraft missions and their triumphal culmination in the Apollo
11 landing in June, 1969. In August of that year, the space science
community convened in Woods Hole to plan for the next Apollo
missions. Harry opened and chaired that meeting which included
three of his former students: Noel Hinners *63, Chuck Helsley
*60 and me. After the morning coffee break, Bill Ruby took over
the chair per Harry’s request. A bit later as we were having an
outdoor lunch, word was quietly passed that Harry had gone to a
doctor’s office, had a heart attack and died in the waiting room. It
was a far more somber group that met that afternoon, but at least
Harry had lived to see the successful end of his contribution to
the most ambitious geologic expedition ever mounted. Chairing
a session to build on that achievement seemed a fitting stage on
which to end his brilliant career. <[email protected]>
around the Rub al Khali on
the way back to Dhahran,
he explained that he was
returning to the States from
a consulting trip in SE Asia.
More to the point, he asked
me a lot of personal questions in the course of what I
felt was a very comfortable
conversation. One thing
really impressed him; as he
looked down on the vast sea
of sand, he exclaimed, “Now
I can see how the Navajo
sandstone was formed!!” In
retrospect, that was my initial interview by the Geology
faculty.
Finishing up four years of
exploration in the Arabian
desert, I anxiously awaited
word from Princeton. Suddenly, we received a large packet from
Housing with applications for family housing - but not a word
from the Geology Department. Then, out of the blue, I received a
personal telegram that simply said, “Dear Bill, Veni, Vidi, Vici .....
H. H. Hess.” That was it!! When I came back down to earth, I was
able to complete my annual field report and set sail for home.
Based at my parents’ home in Plainfield, I made my way down
to Princeton one day, found Guyot Hall and met Dr. Bud (Arthur
Buddington *16, faculty 1920-59) in his lab. After some warm
pleasantries, he broached the subject of my qualifications in German and handed me Edvard Suess’ monster volume Das Antlitz
der Erde saying, “Here, take this and translate it! Professor Hess
will be back here in a couple of weeks.”
When all hands were back at Guyot, I met Miss Law and she
introduced me to The Man himself..!! Harry was happy to learn
that we were settled in the Harrison Street housing project. Then,
he asked me what I had in mind for a thesis. I confidently replied, “I
want to ‘do’ the Miocene of the Persian Gulf Basin.” “Oh!” he said.
“You’ve seen enough of that. I suggest you look at something new.
By the way, have you ever met Erling Dorf...?” Within minutes,
it seemed, I was face-to-face with Erling, who promptly asked,
“Do you know anything about Yellowstone Park?” And the rest is
history!
Like all my “brothers,” I still stand in awe of Harry and the
privilege he accorded me to study under the most terrific group of
men I have ever known. Thanks again, Bill—and to all the guys
who paid tribute to Harry. <[email protected]>
Added after the Deadline:
A Harry Hess story from Alan Smith *63, March 8, 2006
The one I like best, which like most stories may be embellished,
concerns a graduate student, a senior professor, and Harry. As
you may remember, one graduate student was dirt poor. He used
to sleep in the Department (I believe) and cook his breakfast over
a Bunsen burner (so it is said) at the crack of dawn, or earlier in
winter, so that when people came in the smell had dissipated. One
day, a senior professor came in early, caught him at it and finished
a dressing down with the threat to tell ‘Professor Hess’ what had
been going on. The student was very worried and hung around
on the ground floor until Harry entered—probably at about 10
o’clock or so—smoking his proverbial cigarette. The student followed Harry up the stairs, explaining what had happened, apologizing for it. Harry never said a word until he reached his office
when he turned to him, took the cigarette out of his mouth with
the words: “Didn’t hear you,” and went into his office. Now this
is a story that brings out each professor’s character. But you may
not want to use it. Besides which, there may be other and better
versions around. <[email protected]>
Response from Bill Brown *57 on the HHH Centennial Issue,
April 28, 2006
Dear Bill (Bonini ’48, faculty 1953-96) I am at a loss for words
to express my feelings of joy and gratitude to you and Laurie
(Wanat) for the “Harry Hess Centennial” issue of The Smilodon.
I hope it’s not too late to share a few of my recollections of Harry,
perhaps to be incorporated in the Departmental website in early
July.
Through the good graces of Cottie Seager (Aramco Exploration,
Manager) and Bill Furnish (Chair, Iowa Dept.) I was introduced
to and made application to Princeton in 1954. To illustrate how
Harry sometimes “did business,” one morning in the winter of
early 1954, I was told by Dhahran radio (without explanation)
to meet the weekly DC-3 that serviced the exploration camps.
When the plane landed, a very distinguished gentleman stepped
out, came over to me, extended his hand and said, “Bill, I am Edward Sampson (’14 *20, faculty 1925-59).” As we rode together
The Smilodon, a Web Supplement
A Note from Bela Csejtey, Jr. *63, May 19, 2006
As a 1963 graduate of the Department, I read with great interest in the latest issue of The Smilodon the reminiscences about Dr.
Hess, but was deeply saddened of learning the passing of Dr. John
Maxwell, my thesis adviser in Montana. I was planning to attend
the geol grads reunion in Canada last September, but some health
problems prevented me from doing so.
15
July 1, 2006
While reading The Smilodon, a number of my own experiences
with Dr. Hess came to mind, but would like to share with you just
one. In the fall of 1956 I was a 4th year geology student in Hungary, but escaped to Austria after Soviet troops brutally suppressed
the Hungarian Revolution. Escaping from Hungary I could not
bring with me any personal papers or school documents. Neither
did I know anybody who could vouch for me in the West or in
the USA where I emigrated to in early 1957. Needless to say, none
of this was planned but dictated by unforeseen events. In the US
I wanted to continue my geologic studies, although my English
was practically nonexistent at the time.
While I was searching for possibilities to continue my studies,
one day in the spring of 1957 I showed up at the Geology Department of Princeton, wanting to talk to somebody. To my surprise,
Dr. Hess graciously granted me an interview. First he asked me to
make a list of all my geology subjects I studied in Hungary, then
he talked to me and asked a number of questions. I realized the
importance of this interview, and I was understandably a little
nervous. Finally Dr. Hess took me to the classroom next to his
office, pulled a number of rock specimens from the cabinets along
the wall, and handing them to me said: “Can you tell me what this
is?” or “What can you tell about this one?” I did my best in my
broken English, when finally he handed me a very odd-looking
rock, a kind I never saw before. I looked long and hard at it trying
to come up with a plausible answer, but I just could not. Finally,
realizing that this might nix my chances to continue my studies,
with a heavy heart I said, “Sir, I don’t know.” In a split second he
came back, “I don’t know either.” At this I was not only pleasantly
surprised and relieved, but felt instant admiration for the greatness
of the man. In addition, I was flabbergasted, because in the rigid
European university system a remark like this from a professor to
a lowly student was simply unheard of.
Later in the year I was informed that Princeton accepted me.
In the first few months, I was slated to join Dr. Hess’s Caribbean
project, but my special status in the US as a political refugee permitted only a single entry into the country. In other words, if I left
the US for the Caribbean, even as a student, I might not have been
readmitted. So Dr. Hess arranged for me to join Dr. Maxwell’s
project in the Montana Rockies instead.
Looking back, my fieldwork in the Rockies and my association
with Dr. Maxwell was one of the happiest if not the happiest period of my life. Since leaving Princeton, nowhere did I ever meet
such a group of brilliant scientists and decent human beings, both
faculty and fellow students, as at Princeton. I feel privileged and
am grateful for the opportunity to have been associated with such
an outstanding Department and people.<[email protected]>
shuffled off down the hall, pausing to casually say as he left, “Oh,
I’m Hess.”
When it was time that Fall to talk with Harry about a future
thesis topic, I thought he would be delighted to learn that the
USGS had offered me full thesis support to map a quad in the Sierra
Nevada. I brought in maps, showing what was known about the
area, and thought he would be impressed to know that there was
a small serpentinite body amongst the metamorphic and granitic
rocks. Instead he told me that “there was very little to be learned
about serpentinites anymore”, and that what I needed to broaden
my experience was “familiarity with stratigraphy and paleontology”.
He offered me a chance to map an area in northern Colombia as
one of his Caribbean students, and I accepted with joy, despite a
lack of enthusiasm for a soft rock thesis. So far as I know, Harry
could not possibly have known that there indeed were serpentinites
in this unstudied part of the remote Guajira Peninsula, but indeed
there were, and the “sedimentary” origin of these rocks became a
major focus of my thesis and subsequent early papers.
Marti and I had (unexpectedly) gotten married while I was on
a post-General Exam winter trip to California in 1963. After returning to Princeton (where Walt Alvarez *67 and others kindly
staged a memorable “Post-Marital Batchelor’s Party” at the Grad
College), we had little time for adjustments to married life before I
headed back to Colombia for final fieldwork. Marti stayed behind
to earn enough money for her airline tickets. Harry planned to
visit Walt Alvarez and me in the field in the spring of 1963, but
the rainy season had begun early in the Guajira Peninsula, and it
wasn’t possible to drive to Maicao to meet him for his field visit.
Instead, he managed to charter a Cessna 195 to fly out to a dry area
of the Alta Guajira, where Walt and I met him. We spent several
superb days looking at field discoveries and problem areas by day,
and sleeping in hammocks wherever we could at night. For all of
Harry’s Caribbean students, his field visits were the highlights of
our existence, and the one time we would ever be able to casually
discuss field problems and thesis foci, as we knew he had more
important problems to deal with in Princeton. I had been hoarding
questions for Harry all spring, and kept asking his opinions about
mapping problems and regional correlations within the broader
Caribbean context. He never answered my questions in any serious
way, however, and I lost hope of ever learning his thoughts.
Harry had an “important NAS meeting” to attend in California
after his field visit (critical decisions about lunar astronaut qualifications needed to be made), and when no airplane arrived to take him
back to civilization on the appointed day, we had to figure some
means to transport Hess back to Maicao and its airport. There was
no room in the Land Rover for Walt, so Hess and I headed off
alone for the long drive to Maicao (normally 6 hours or so). An
endless sea of mud now covered the area to be traversed, however,
and mud was incredibly deep in the truck tracks we had to follow.
We frequently became near-hopelessly bogged down in deep mud
wallows under a blazing sun. Sometimes we were able to recruit
a few dozen Guajiro Indians to pull us out of mud holes, but in
other places no help was to be found, and we relied on the Rover’s
capistan winch and a long manila rope. This required anchoring
one end of the rope to a tree, with Harry pulling the other end
to maintain tension around the winch. Once the Rover started to
move, Hess had to keep the rope tight as he backed away from
the road. Mud holes and prickly pear cactus were frequently en-
Harry Hess --- A Wonderful Human Being and Friend
Notes from Jack Lockwood *66, Marrakech, Morocco, June
14, 2006
I first met Harry in 1961, the day I arrived in Princeton, when
he sauntered by my new office, dressed in non-descript clothes,
puffing an always present cigarette. I had no idea what the famous
man looked like. He never introduced himself, nor asked my name,
and I assumed from his demeanor that he was a janitor. I asked
him a number of trivial questions about the weather, where to park
my car, where I could dispose of packing boxes, how to obtain
keys, etc. He answered in a methodical, janitor-like manner, then
The Smilodon, a Web Supplement
16
July 1, 2006
countered, and more than once poor Harry backed into vicious
“pringamosa” (a stinging nettle that instantly raised painful welts).
Miraculously, we eventually reached Maicao very late at night,
completely exhausted, and managed to find two DDT-greasy
rooms in a small hotel. There were no showers, and Hess was still
mud-covered for his flights to attend the forthcoming meeting at
the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab, but he seemed in no mood to sleep
after our harrowing journey. We would have enjoyed several Cuba
libres, but the bars were closed, and all I had to offer was a bottle
of cheap scotch and a maid could only find some warm bottles
of orange soda. Harry said “better than nothing”, so we poured
scotch into the soda bottles, and stayed up for a few hours to relax
and reminisce about the day’s adventures. Harry had some delightfully randy comments to make about the buxom maid that night,
but said nothing of more import, until about 2 or 3 in the morning, when he announced he was tired and needed to sleep a little
before his early morning flight to Cartagena. “But, first—about
your questions”, and he proceeded to answer every single geologic
question that I had asked him over the past week—wonderfully
detailed answers that integrated my Guajira findings with the grand
scheme of Caribbean history and tectonics. He had obviously been
formulating his answers over the past several days!
I helped Harry carry his luggage up the steep aisle of the DC-3
the next morning, bade him adieu, and thought this was the end
of Harry’s input for this visit. I headed off on my own 3-day driving adventure through deep mud to Cartagena, where I was to
meet my new bride, Marti, who had finally earned enough money
for her airline ticket to join me. When I arrived in Cartagena, I
checked the “Princeton Apartado Aereo,” and found an envelope
containing a long letter Harry had written to me while flying to
Bogota a few days earlier. I expected more thoughts about my map
problems, but instead found a warm personal letter about married
life. He wrote that adjusting to a primitive field life in the Guajira
would not be easy for Marti, and that I would need to be gentle
and understanding. He wrote about the critical need for me to
focus on Marti’s problems, and to realize that her concerns would
be far more important than mine. It was a wonderful “fatherly”
letter—a window into the deep concern that Harry felt for all his
students. <[email protected]>
would decline it and continue the assistantship. He listened, asked
what the exact difference was (not even glancing at my figures),
told me not to send my answer to NSF that day, put on his hat
and coat, and left. Less than an hour later Miss Law phoned that
he wanted to see me. Harry gave me a check for the amount, told
me to endorse it to the university, and to take the fellowship; the
assistantship could go to another. Years later I heard from two different faculty sources that Harry’s creative financing used to send
the Nassau Hall Vice President for Administration up the wall.
This story is about graduate-student times outside the classroom. Glenn Poulter *57 and I were in the Naval Reserve. Harry
convinced us to join the Princeton-area Naval Reserve Research
Company, which met once a month somewhere at a military base
or research lab in central New Jersey or northeastern Pennsylvania.
Glenn or I would drive. Although we had security clearances, the
offerings were pretty tame, and so the conversation going and coming was rarely naval research. Much was about geology, but also
included such current-events topics as the cold war, public education, and national support for science (Harry had a great imitation
of Admiral Byrd’s broadcasts from Little America, complete with
the hisses, crackles, and fading of short wave, touting Quaker Oats
or whatever sponsor was contributing to the expedition). Invariably
we would be invited into 150 FitzRandolph Road (Harry’s home)
to continue for another hour over room-temperature beer. Many
times in the past 50 years I’ve thought to myself how remarkable
that Harry could predict what so many future contentious points
would be. <[email protected]>
Harry Hess by Carl Bowin *60, Woods Hole, MA, June 25,
2006
Harry’s easy-going yet attentive persona was infectious, and all
his ‘Caribbean Project’ students shared a bond with him, that we
all cherish. When I first met him in his Guyot office, (which of
course looked just like the photo in The Smilodon, Spring 2006, p.
3), I was struck that his office was quite different than those of the
geological giants I had known at CalTech (BS) and Northwestern
(MS). I must have very much liked its carefree style, for my own
office at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI),
commonly imitates his. He soon explained that I would be doing
my thesis study in the Dominican Republic (not Venezuela or
Puerto Rico as I believed I had expected). It wasn’t until many
years later that I’ve been able to piece together much of the story
behind that surprise change. Seems a man, William D. Pawley, offered Harry financial and logistic support, if he could have his next
“Caribbean Project” student study a large serpentinized periodtite
body in central Dominican Republic (DR). And, I was that next
student. That man, I’ve later learned, happened to have been the
one who in 1941 started the Flying Tigers under Commander
Claire L. Chennault, which was a way for the US Government to
help the Chinese fight the invading Japanese, while staying behind
the scenes.
Pawley also was involved with the CIA in Nicaragua, and owned
the bus line in Havana, Cuba during Batista’s time. Seems he had
an affinity to dictators, and when Sergeant Trujillo forced a coup,
and took control of the Dominican Republic, Pawley rushed in to
bankroll him. Trujillo was so grateful, that he gave the country’s
mineral concession to Pawley. Northwest of the Capital city, Santo
Domingo (then changed to Ciudad Trujillo), lay a small moun-
Harry Hess from Ralph Moberly *56, Hawaii, June 23, 2006
Acknowledgment of Harry’s influence on my decision to enter
undergraduate geology was in my Hess Volume paper on the advancement of arcs as the lithosphere sinks away before them (GSA
Memoir 132, 1972). This story is about graduate-student support,
and cutting red tape. I was offered a teaching assistantship for the
first two years in graduate school, and my tuition was paid through
the GI Bill. My first year was the first year the new NSF offered
one-year fellowships, and I applied for one. Successful fellowship
news, however, came with further rules than were in the original
announcement. The fellowship was for instruction and research,
disallowing teaching or other service, so I could not hold both
fellowship and assistantship. I could not receive funds from two
federal sources at the same time, so I had to choose between the TA
and NSF. I went through some calculations that included tuition
and all, and saw that I would receive a few hundred dollars more
from an assistantship plus the GI Bill than from NSF alone. I went
in to tell Harry that I had won the fellowship, but explained why I
The Smilodon, a Web Supplement
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July 1, 2006
tain of serpentiized periodtite with a thick layer of laterite rich in
nickel-iron. This deposit was mined by bulldozers and trucks that
carried the ore to a nearby smelting plant, and out came ingots of
nickel-iron. I now have to surmise that Pawley, the astute business
man, anticipated that the next Princeton student would find him
more laterite deposits for a most modest investment.
After each 60 days in the DR, I had to visit another Caribbean
country for a few days and return to get another tourist visa. These
breaks from geologic mapping provided nice chances to see other
islands, and other student’s field projects before completing my
thesis and graduating. Currie Palmer *63 and Frederick Nagle
*67 carried on in the DR, completing Princeton theses on the
north flank of the Cordillera Central and the north coast region.
Harry had a copy of my thesis bound in leather by Princeton
University Press with elephant hide end papers, with matching
slip case, for presentation to Generalisimo Rafael Leonidas Trujillo
Molina, Benefactor de la Patria, y Padre de la Patria Nueva. Pawley
presented the bound thesis to Trujillo. Soon thereafter, Trujillo
was assassinated during an evening walk along the cities’ coastal
avenue. Turns out, I had come to know one of the assassins. So,
my studies for Harry gained me experiences in a lot more than
peridotite geology.
There was not a suitable teaching position opening, so Harry had
me stay on as an Instructor for a year. During my time mapping
on the flank of the Cordillera Central (the highest mountain in the
Greater Antilles under the tropic sun, I came to wonder whether
gravity measurements might help in deducing the mountain’s
structure under the ground. Prof. William ‘Bill’ Bonini ’48,
faculty 1953-96, gave me 15 minutes of instruction and loaned
me Princeton’s Worden student gravity meter. My Jeep was still
in the DR, being taken care of by the company run by Pawley’s
brother, Edward. So, accompanied by a geology undergraduate,
John Whetten ’57 *62, we returned to conduct gravity measurements, around the country, in ten days. Turns out that those ten
days changed a geologist into a geophysicist.
Again, it wasn’t till rather recently, with the increasing information available via the Internet that I’ve been able to piece together
what brought about that conversion, and, of course, Harry was
responsible. In the late 1950’s and early 60’s, the US Navy was very
much concerned with being able to measure gravity from ships at
sea, which is tricky to do on a platform that moves up and down
and rolls back and forth. The Navy was not particularly interested
in using gravity to learn about the structure of mountains and
seamounts under the sea, as we geologist are, but in the vertical
The Smilodon, a Web Supplement
integral of gravity over an area. Gravity varies as one over the square
of distance to mass sources, whereas its vertical integral represents
an equipotential that is proportional to one over the distance. The
particular gravity equipotential that coincides with sea level is called
the geoid. So, because there are gravity anomalies over the Earth’s
surface and oceans, the geoid has irregularities in its slope (due to
deflections of the vertical), and may be as much as a few minutes
of arc. And, if a submarine does not know the correct ‘deflection
of the vertical’ at its location when it launches an ICBM, that
missile’s warhead could miss an intended hardened target 6,000
miles away.
Harry Hess was a Rear Admiral in the US Navy, and attended
briefing in Washington, DC, when the significance to the Navy of
gravity at sea was presented. Also, occasionally attending those Navy
briefings was J. Bracket Hersey, a seismologist, at WHOI. Harry
and Bracket would often chat after these meetings at the Cosmos
Club where they stayed. After the Navy’s ‘gravity’ briefing, Bracket
mentioned to Harry that he would like to start a gravity program
at WHOI, and Harry said, ‘he knew just the man.’ My ten days of
gravity measurements had made me an expert. Shortly thereafter, I
drove to Woods Hole on Cape Cod for an interview with Bracket,
and got the job of starting a gravity program at WHOI. Bracket
applied to the Navy for funding, and I set off first to get a gravity
meter. In visiting the Coast and Geodetic Survey and seeing how
it took several people three days to manually process the strip chart
records obtained previously at sea, it took 3 milliseconds to realize
I needed a digital computer to process the data at sea while it was
being collected. Bracket had the money from the Navy, I had the
desire, and so the World’s first digital seagoing computer (an IBM
1710 Control System) went to sea on the Research Vessel Chain in
1962 to process data in real-time from our LaCoste & Romberg
sea gravity meter S-13.
No doubt I was primed to think of incorporating a computer
from earlier using an IBM 650 computer that an off-campus
contractor let Princeton students use at night, and that Charles
Helsley *60 told me about. I started using it to try to learn how
long it may have taken some long chiastolite crystals to grow in
the contact metamorphic aureole of a gabbro intrusion in northern
Maine I had mapped for my Northwestern University Masters’
thesis. One afternoon I explained these heat flow relations for heat
emanating from a vertical dike to Harry. A few days later he had
his copies of “Youthful Age of the Ocean Basins,” and I was the
sole acknowledgement. <[email protected]>
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July 1, 2006