John M. Hunt papers

John M. Hunt was born in Cleveland, OH, in 1918 and received his B.A. in chemistry from Western Reserve University in 1941 and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in organic chemistry from Pennsylvania State University in 1943 and 1946, respectively. In 1947 he joined Standard Oil of New Jersey’s Exploration Research Laboratory in Tulsa, OK. Dr. Hunt joined the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution as Chairman of the Department of Chemistry in 1964, serving in this capacity until 1974. Serving as Chief Scientist, Hunt led expeditions to the Red Sea in 1966 and the Black Sea in 1969. Dr. Hunt chose to step down as Chairman in 1974 in order to devote more time to his research as a Senior Scientist for WHOI. He was the first American to receive the Treibs Award, the highest international honor in organic geochemistry, in 1982. In 1984 he was named Scientist Emeritus at the Institution.

In 1964 Hunt became a Distinguished Lecturer of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG). He worked as an Associate Editor of the Bulletin of the AAPG from 1966 until 1984. Dr. Hunt has been a member of the U.S. National Committee for Geochemistry sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the Joint Oceanographic Institutions for Deep Earth Sampling (JOIDES) Advisory Panel on Organic Chemistry and Passive Ocean Margins, the American Chemical Society, the AAPG, the Geochemistry Society, and the International Association of Geochemists and Cosmochemists. He has authored more than 100 publications on petroleum geochemistry, and a reference textbook entitled Petroleum Geochemistry and Geology. Dr. Hunt has testified before both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives on oil pollution.