Kenneth O. Emery papers

Kenneth O. Emery began his career in the Division of War Research at the University of California, San Diego from 1943 to 1945, producing maps of sediment types that were important for acoustic submarine warfare but also proved valuable to later studies by K.O. and others concerning continental margins. After the war, K.O. moved to Los Angeles, where he taught geology for 16 years as an assistant professor and later professor at the University of Southern California (USC) and did research in the Gulf of California. He also worked for the U.S. Geological Survey from 1946 to 1960 and served as Oceanographer at the Navy Ordnance Test Center in Pasadena from 1960 to 1962. In 1962, K.O.’s research brought him to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where he recruited a group of young geologists who became the core of a marine geology grouping what was then a department of geophysics. He was named Senior Scientist in 1963, was the Henry Bryant Bigelow Oceanographer from 1975 to 1979, and was named Scientist Emeritus in 1979. He also served as the first Dean of the WHOI/MIT Joint Graduate Program.

[Biographical information taken from WHOI obituary.]