Walter Pitman Views

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The 1996 Maurice Ewing Medal was presented to Walter C. Pitman, III, at the Fall Meeting Honor Ceremony December 17, 1996, in San Francisco. The medal recognizes significant contributions to understanding physical, geophysical, and geological processes in the ocean and outstanding service to the marine sciences.

William Jason Morgan of Princeton University, and Walter Pitman, III and Lynn R. Sykes of Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory will share in one of earth science's premier honors, each receiving a commemorative gold medal and a third of the $100,000 in prize money. Columbia President George Rupp will make the presentations during a black-tie dinner.

Walter Pitman was born in Newark, N.J., on October 21, 1931. After initially embarking on a career in electrical engineering following studies at Lehigh University, Pitman switched to Earth science as a graduate student in oceanography at Columbia University in 1960, and stayed on to make a career of it at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

The story of Noah and the great flood is one that so permeates our culture that generations of geologists have devoted their lives to looking for evidence of a prehistoric worldwide flood. But it was not until the 1990's that geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman gathered clues pointing to an actual ancient flood in the Middle East about 7,500 years ago. Sediment core-samples the scientists took from the bottom of the Black Sea revealed sections of once-dry, sun-baked land.

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