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J. Lamar Worzel (left) and Maurice Ewing displayed samples of sediment core on the deck of a deep-sea drilling ship. (Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory via New York Times/File 1968) |
J. Lamar Worzel; helped explore ocean's depths
LOS ANGELES - J. Lamar Worzel, a Columbia University physicist who used the emerging science of acoustics to explore the ocean floor and help US submarines evade and track enemies, died of a heart attack Dec. 26 at his home in Wilmington, N.C. He was 89.
A talented improviser, Dr. Worzel used objects from the home and laboratory to piece together instruments that did not yet exist, demonstrating their value and paving the way for the development of more sophisticated tools. With his longtime boss and colleague, William Maurice Ewing, he helped found Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, a preeminent geophysical research center, and began assembling its fleet of oceanographic vessels.
In his later years, Dr. Worzel helped the Navy locate the sunken nuclear submarine USS Thresher.
Dr. Worzel met Ewing in the 1930s while an undergraduate physics student at Lehigh University. Ewing took a group of students sailing on marine expeditions out of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Dr. Worzel quickly became his prize pupil.
Working with other students, Dr. Worzel built the first camera for taking pictures thousands of feet below the ocean's surface. The first model used a coffee can lid for a flash reflector and a thick drinking glass for a casing.
His first deep-water seismograph incorporated a modified Hamilton railroad watch. An oscillograph was powered by the motor from a toy electric train. "We never allowed ourselves to think that anything we decided to do was impossible," he wrote in 2001 in an unpublished autobiography.
Pictures from those early cameras taken by Dr. Worzel and his colleagues overturned the prevailing notion that deepwater abysses were lifeless. Their magnetic and gravitic measurements charted the continental margins, supporting the theory of plate tectonics.
Among the early discoveries was the existence of what the scientists called shadow zones, areas of temperature and pressure that reflected sounds to the surface rather than permitting them to pass through. Dr. Worzel coauthored a manual listing these zones that allowed many US submarine commanders during World War II to hide from German ships.
They also identified the "deep sound channel," a narrow zone about 3,000 feet below the surface that transmitted sounds with unusual clarity.
This discovery became the basis of the Navy's vast program of sound fixing and ranging, or SOFAR, and its successors, in which sensitive microphones were installed at key locations around the globe to identify and track submarines.
Dr. Worzel also used his seismic expertise to help the Navy locate the Thresher after it sank in 8,400 feet of water in 1963 during a deep-diving trial. For his efforts, he received a Navy Meritorious Public Service award.
In 1948, recruited by Columbia's then-president Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ewing and Dr. Worzel established what was then called the Lamont Geological Observatory in a Hudson River estate donated by the Lamont family. Dr. Worzel and his wife, Dorothy, lived on the grounds of the spacious estate, raising four children there.
John Lamar Worzel was born Feb. 21, 1919, in West New Brighton on Staten Island, where his father was a real-estate lawyer.
Dr. Worzel leaves his wife of 67 years, the former Dorothy Crary; a daughter, Sandra Lee Browne of Toronto; sons Howard of Phoenix, Richard of Toronto, and William of Ann 
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