Ronald George Mason (

Winsor, Hampshire Winsor is a village in the civil parish of Copythorne, in Hampshire, England. It is situated within the boundaries of the New Forest National Park. Surrounding villages are Copythorne to the west, Netley Marsh to the southeast, and Bartley to ...

, England, 24 December 1916 – London, 16 July 2009) was one of the oceanographers whose pioneering

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

geomagnetic survey work lead to the discovery of magnetic striping on the seafloor. First discovering magnetic stripes on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean off the

United States West Coast The West Coast of the United States, also known as the Pacific Coast and the Western Seaboard, is the coastline along which the Western United States meets the North Pacific Ocean. The term typically refers to the contiguous U.S. states of Calif ...

, he later also identified them around the

Mid-Atlantic Ridge The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is a mid-ocean ridge (a Divergent boundary, divergent or constructive Plate tectonics, plate boundary) located along the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, and part of the List of longest mountain chains on Earth, longest mountai ...

Career

Mason received his doctorate in geophysics at

Imperial College Imperial College London, also known as Imperial, is a public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who envisioned a cultural district in South Kensington that included museums ...

, London, in 1947. In 1955, while on

sabbatical A sabbatical (from the Hebrew: (i.e., Sabbath); in Latin ; Greek: ) is a rest or break from work; "an extended period of time intentionally spent on something that’s not your routine job." The concept of the sabbatical is based on the Bi ...

at the

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small group of institutes ...

in Pasadena,

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

, Mason secured permission to embark and tow the ASQ-3A fluxgate magnetometer, developed by Victor Vacquier of the

Scripps Institution of Oceanography Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) is the center for oceanography and Earth science at the University of California, San Diego. Its main campus is located in La Jolla, with additional facilities in Point Loma. Founded in 1903 and incorpo ...

, behind the

United States Coast and Geodetic Survey The United States Coast and Geodetic Survey ( USC&GS; known as the Survey of the Coast from 1807 to 1836, and as the United States Coast Survey from 1836 until 1878) was the first scientific agency of the Federal government of the United State ...

survey ship A survey vessel is any type of ship or boat that is used for underwater surveys, usually to collect data for mapping or planning underwater construction or mineral extraction. It is a type of research vessel, and may be designed for the pu ...

USC&GS ''Pioneer'' (OSS 31) while she participated in a joint survey effort with the U.S. Navy. Scripps was cooperating in order to map any magnetic anomalies the magnetometer detected on the seafloor. During the summer of 1955, Mason arranged to have the ASQ-3A – originally designed for use aboard aircraft – housed in a non-magnetic, fishlike container, making it the first marine magnetometer. In August 1955, ''Pioneer'' conducted a survey in the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...

along the

from

Point Conception Point Conception (Chumashan languages, Chumash: ''Humqaq'') is a headland along the Gaviota Coast in southwestern Santa Barbara County, California, United States. It is the point where the Santa Barbara Channel meets the Pacific Ocean, and as ...

, California, to Cape Flattery, Washington, with Mason aboard and the ASQ-3A trailing in her wake in its container. Within hours, Mason detected an unmistakable pattern of north-south magnetic "stripes" in the seafloor rocks; as ''Pioneer''s cruise continued, Mason continued to observe this pattern throughout the survey area. Masons work aboard ''Pioneer'' with the fluxgate magnetometer thus revealed " magnetic striping" on the floor of the Pacific, the first time it had been noted anywhere. The magnetic data he collected from the ocean crust later was interpreted as containing field reversals that were used by Canadian geophysicist Lawrence Morley to prove

seafloor spreading Seafloor spreading, or seafloor spread, is a process that occurs at mid-ocean ridges, where new oceanic crust is formed through volcanic activity and then gradually moves away from the ridge. History of study Earlier theories by Alfred Wegener ...

and

plate tectonics Plate tectonics (, ) is the scientific theory that the Earth's lithosphere comprises a number of large tectonic plates, which have been slowly moving since 3–4 billion years ago. The model builds on the concept of , an idea developed durin ...

. Mason was appointed to the Chair of Pure Geophysics at Imperial College in 1967 and became head of the college's Geophysics Department in 1977. During the 1980s, he pioneered extremely accurate techniques for measuring the Earth's crust which further confirmed plate tectonic movements.

Career

See also

References

Further reading