Comment on “Tracing the origins of the Lamont Observatory”]An Added perspective on the development of the “B.T.”

Abstract

I am writing in response to J. Lamar Worzel's superb biographical article about Maurice Ewing and the Lamont‐Doherty Geological Observatory (Eos, Nov. 14, 2000). “Doc” Ewing was a hero to me as well as to all the sea people with whom he came in contact, owing to his initiation of so many ingenious and productive projects and his founding of one of the world's most important geophysical institutions.In the interests of perspective, I would like to add a minor note on the contribution to the original development of the bathythermograph; i.e., by Athelstan Spilhaus. Spilhaus was another of the small group of original founders of America's Ocean Program, mainly in the 1930s and leading up to—and through—World War II.