Bruce C. Heezen

Who was Bruce C. Heezen?

Bruce Charles Heezen was an American geologist. He is most famous for working with oceanographic cartographer Marie Tharp at Columbia University to map the Mid-Atlantic Ridge during the 1950s.

Heezen was born in Vinton, Iowa. An only child, he moved at age 6 with his parents to Muscatine, Iowa, where he graduated from high school in 1942. He received his B.A. from the University of Iowa in 1947 and in 1952 his M.A. from Columbia University and in 1957 his Ph.D.

Heezen collaborated extensively with pioneering cartographer Marie Tharp. He himself interpreted their early work on the mid-Atlantic ridge as supporting S. Warren Carey's Expanding Earth Theory which had been developed in the 1950s, but under Marie Tharp's influence "eventually gave up the idea of an expanding earth for a form of continental drift in the mid-1960s."

Heezen died in 1977 during a research cruise to study the Mid-Atlantic Ridge near Iceland aboard the NR-1 submarine.

The Oceanographic Survey Ship USNS Bruce C. Heezen was christened in honor of him in 1999.