Vocation : Science : Geology

William Maurice "Doc" Ewing (May 12, 1906 – May 4, 1974) was an American geophysicist and oceanographer.Ewing has been described as a pioneering geophysicist who worked on the research of seismic reflection and refraction in ocean basins, ocean bottom photography, submarine sound transmission (including the SOFAR channel), deep sea core samples of the ocean bottom, theory and observation of earthquake surface waves, fluidity of the Earth's core, generation and propagation of microseisms, submarine explosion seismology, marine gravity surveys, bathymetry and sedimentation, natural radioactivity of ocean waters and sediments, study of abyssal plains and submarine canyons.

José María Albareda Herrera (Caspe, 15 April 1902 - 26 February 1966, Madrid) was a Spanish soil scientist and science administrator. From its 1939 creation by Francoist Spain to his 1966 death, he was the secretary general and head of the Higher Council of Scientific Research (CSIC), the main Spanish scientific institution.
He was one of the first numerary members of the Opus Dei (from 1937) and was a close friend of its founder, Josemaría Escrivá. He was ordained a priest in 1959. In 1960, he was appointed the first president of the University of Navarra.

Friedrich von Huene, born Friedrich Richard von Hoinigen, (22 March 1875 – 4 April 1969) was a German paleontologist who renamed more dinosaurs in the early 20th century than anyone else in Europe. He also made key contributions about various Permo-Carboniferous limbed vertebrates.

Christian Gottlieb Ferdinand Ritter von Hochstetter (30 April 1829 – 18 July 1884) was a German-Austrian geologist.

George Shirley Switzer (June 11, 1915 – March 23, 2008) was an American mineralogist who is credited with starting the Smithsonian Institution's famed National Gem and Mineral Collection by acquiring the Hope Diamond for the museum in 1958. Switzer made the arrangements when renowned New York City jeweler Harry Winston decided to donate the Hope Diamond to the Smithsonian.Switzer was also known for his analysis of Moon rocks which were brought back by NASA missions to the Moon.Today, the National Gem and Mineral Collection at the National Museum of Natural History currently contains more than 15,000 individual gems in the collection, as well as 350,000 minerals and 300,000 samples of rock and ore specimens. Additionally, the Smithsonian's National Gem and Mineral Collection houses approximately 35,000 meteorites, constituting what is considered to be one of the most comprehensive collections of its kind in the world.

Lloyd Viel Berkner (February 1, 1905 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin – June 4, 1967 in Washington, D.C.) was an American physicist and engineer. He was one of the inventors of the measuring device that since has become standard at ionospheric stations because it measures the height and electron density of the ionosphere. The data obtained in the worldwide net of such instruments were important for the developing theory of short wave radio propagation to which Berkner himself gave important contributions.
Berkner was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1948.Later he investigated the development of the Earth's atmosphere. Since he needed data from the whole world, he proposed the International Geophysical Year in 1950. At that time, the IGY was the largest cooperative study of the Earth ever undertaken.
Berkner was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1956. The IGY was carried out by the International Council of Scientific Unions while he was president in 1957–1959. He was also a member of the President's Scientific Advisory Committee in 1958 while he was president of Associated Universities Inc.
In 1963, Berkner, with L.C. Marshall, advanced a theory to describe the way in which the atmospheres of the Solar System's inner planets had evolved.
Beginning in 1926, as a naval officer, Berkner assisted in the development of radar and navigation systems, naval aircraft electronics engineering, and studies that led to the construction of the Distant Early Warning system, a chain of radar stations designed to give the United States advance warning in the event of a missile attack across the North Pole. In the 50s and 60s, Berkner held intelligence clearances in the Atomic Energy Commission and other agencies. He worked with the CIA in some capacity as well, but any activities are wholly classified as of 2015.Berkner worked with Dallas community leaders to establish the Graduate Research Center of the Southwest (later renamed the Southwest Center for Advanced Studies, which would eventually become The University of Texas at Dallas).He wrote more than 100 papers and several books, including Rockets and Satellites (1958), Science in Space (1961), and The Scientific Age (1964).
In 1961, Berkner was president of the Institute of Radio Engineers.

David McCoy (August 24, 1915 – February 8, 2020) was an American skier and businessman who founded the Mammoth Mountain Ski Area in 1942.

Harold (Hal) Masursky (December 23, 1922* – August 24, 1990) was an American astrogeologist.After leaving Yale University without defending his dissertation, he started his career in the early 1950s as a field geologist in Wyoming and Colorado working for the United States Geological Survey (USGS). In the early 1960s, he moved to the Astrogeology division of the USGS and began working at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. In the mid-1960s, he moved to Flagstaff, Arizona as a founding planetary geologist at the newly constructed USGS Astrogeology Science Center. Throughout his professional career with the USGS, his work contributed to the mission of NASA in the areas of economic, structural, and planetary geology.
He was responsible for the investigation of planetary and lunar surfaces, especially in finding scientifically valuable landing places. This included for the Apollo program, where, in the 1960s, he played a major role in choosing landing sites and assisted in training astronauts in the basics of geology so they would know what to look for on the surface of the Moon. In the 1970s, he headed the team that mapped the surface of Mars and was once again involved in choosing landing sites, this time for the Mars Viking missions. In the 1980s, he worked with the Voyager program to explore the surfaces of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
Masursky was a strong advocate for the exploration of Venus and he was a key member of Pioneer Venus Orbiter team. He worked on numerous other space missions and programs, including, for Moon exploration, Ranger, Surveyor, the Lunar Orbiter, and the mapping of Mars by Mariner 9, as well as contributing to the missions of the Galileo and Magellan spacecraft. He was often interviewed on television as his enthusiasm for the planetary discoveries of the space missions was both edifying and infectiousAn especially key role was his work as the president of the Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). He created a small stir in 1986, when he was required to reject a popular suggestion that new moons of Uranus, discovered earlier that year, be named for the seven astronauts lost in the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion - the IAU has strict guidelines that prohibit major bodies being named in honor of persons from a particular country.In 1985, Masursky was the recipient of the Distinguished Service Award, which is the highest honorary recognition an employee can receive within the Department of the Interior. Quoting from the award, the 1985 USGS Yearbook states: “Harold Masursky, Geologist, for his imaginative leadership in the field of astrogeology which has influenced almost every facet of lunar and planetary exploration since the beginning of the nation's space program.”The Masursky crater on Mars was chosen because it is effluvial, meaning "flow" (it looks like water ran through it), to honor his fervent belief that Mars once had flowing water on the surface. In 1981, the asteroid 2685 Masursky was discovered and named in his honor. The Masursky Award for Meritorius Service to Planetary Science, first awarded to Carl Sagan in 1991, and the Masursky Lecture, originating in 1992 and given during the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC), are named for him as well.
*Note there is some confusion about the year of Harold Masursky's birth; in some places it is reported as 1922 and in some places is reported as 1923.

Halka Chronic (February 26, 1923 – April 16, 2013) was a geologist who traveled and wrote books about the geology of the western United States. She studied the Grand Canyon, Walnut Canyon and then resided in Boulder, Colorado where she continued to study the Rocky Mountains.