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Harry Hess's Life And Accomplishments

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Harry Hess was a smart person. He was born in New York City. He was very successful in the military. The highest rank he achieved was Rear Admiral. After the military, he went back to work at universities. He discovered flat topped underwater mountains which he named guyots. Hess also came up with the theory of seafloor spreading and helped to explain continental drift and plate tectonics. Harry used sonar technology to map out a large section of the seafloor during WWII. Hess’s findings revolutionized Earth science. Harry Hammond Hess was born on May 27, 1906. He was born to Julian S. Hess, a member of the New York stock exchange and Elizabeth Engel Hess. Harry Hess graduated from Yale University. Upon graduating, Hess taught for one year at Rutgers University and spent a year as a research associate in the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. He was a professor at Princeton University. He became the head of the Geology department in 1950. Harry died of a heart attack on August 26, 1969 in Massachusetts. …show more content…

He had to stop studying this because he was called into active service during World War II since he was in the Navy. During his time in the Navy, the boat had equipment for sounding the ocean floor. Hess took advantage of this and mapped a large portion of the ocean floor. After the war ended, Hess continued to study guyots and mid ocean ridges which run down the center of the ocean like an underwater backbone. Harry Hess made a major contribution to the continental drift theory by discovering seafloor spreading. Seafloor spreading showed that the continents moved by the constantly spreading seafloor. His theory was proved when magnetized strips of rock were discovered on the seafloor showing that the floor was spreading

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