Walter Pitman (geologist)

Walter Clarkson Pitman III is a geophysicist and a professor emeritus at Columbia University. His measurements of magnetic anomalies on the ocean floor supported the Morley–Vine–Matthews hypothesis explaining seafloor spreading. With William Ryan, he developed the Black Sea deluge theory. Among his major awards are the Alexander Agassiz Medal and the Vetlesen Prize.

Pitman was born in Newark, New Jersey, on 21 October 1931. He received a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering in 1956 from Lehigh University and went to work for Hazeltine Corporation from 1956 to 1960. In 1960, he became a marine technician for Columbia University's Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory, applying his expertise as an electrical engineer in oceanographic research. The following year he became a graduate student in geophysics. Among his most important work was measurements of magnetic anomalies in the sea floor which supported the Morley–Vine–Matthews hypothesis explaining seafloor spreading.

In 1984, Pitman was awarded the Society for Sedimentary Geology’s Francis Shepard Medal. In 1996, he was awarded the Maurice Ewing Medal by the American Geophysical Union. In 1998, he received the Alexander Agassiz Medal of the United States National Academy of Sciences "for his fundamental contribution to the plate tectonic revolution through insightful analysis of marine magnetic anomalies and for his studies of the causes and effects of sea-level changes". In 2000, he was awarded the Vetlesen Prize for plate tectonic theory, theoretical geomorphology and tectonics.

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