Bruce C. Heezen : biography

Bruce Charles Heezen (April 11, 1924 – June 21, 1977) was an American geologist. He is most famous for collaborating with oceanographic cartographer Marie Tharp at Columbia University to map the Mid-Atlantic Ridge during the 1950s.

Heezen was born in Vinton, Iowa. He received his B.A. from the University of Iowa in 1947 and in 1952 his M.A. from Columbia University and in 1957 his Ph.D.

Heezen interpreted his early work on the mid-Atlantic ridge as supporting S. Warren Carey’s Expanding Earth Theory which had been developed in the 1950s,Oreskes, Naomi, 2003, Plate Tectonics: An Insider’s History Of The Modern Theory Of The Earth, Westview Press, p. 23, ISBN 0813341329 and "eventually gave up the idea of an expanding earth for a form of continental drift in the mid-1960s".Frankel, Henry, The Continental Drift Debate, Ch. 7 in Scientific controversies, p. 226, 1987, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-27560-6

Heezen died in 1977 during a research cruise to study the Mid-Atlantic Ridge near Iceland aboard the NR-1 submarine.

The Oceanographic Survey Ship USNS Bruce C. Heezen was christened in honor of him in 1999.