Harry Hammond Hess Harry Hammond Hess ( May 24 , 1906 – August 25 , 1969 ) was a geologist and United States Navy officer in World War II . Considered one of the " founding fathers " of the unifying theory of plate tectonics , Rear Admiral Harry Hammond Hess was born on May 24 , 1906 in New York City . He is best known for his theories on sea floor spreading , specifically work on relationships between island arc s , seafloor gravity anomalies , and serpentinized peridotite , suggesting that the convection of the Earth ' s mantle was the driving force behind this process . This work provided a conceptual base for the development of the theory of plate tectonics . Teaching career . Harry Hess taught for a year ( 1932 – 1933 ) at Rutgers University in New Jersey and spent a year as a research associate at the Geophysical Laboratory of Washington , D . C . , before joining the faculty of Princeton University in 1934 . Hess remained at Princeton for the rest of his career and served as Geology Department Chair from 1950 to 1966 . He was a visiting professor at the University of Cape Town , South Africa ( 1949 – 1950 ) , and the University of Cambridge , England ( 1965 ) . Military career . Hess joined the United States Navy during World War II , becoming captain of the USS " Cape Johnson " , an attack transport ship equipped with a new technology : sonar . This command would later prove to be key in Hess ' s development of his theory of sea floor spreading . Hess carefully tracked his travel routes to Pacific Ocean landings on the Marianas , Philippines , and Iwo Jima , continuously using his ship ' s echo sounder . This unplanned wartime scientific surveying enabled Hess to collect ocean floor profiles across the North Pacific Ocean , resulting in the discovery of flat - topped submarine volcanoes , which he termed guyot s , after the nineteenth century geographer Arnold Henry Guyot . After the war , he remained in the Naval Reserve , rising to the rank of rear admiral . Scientific discoveries . In 1960 , Hess made his single most important contribution , which is regarded as part of the major advance in geologic science of the 20th century . In a widely circulated report to the Office of Naval Research , he advanced the theory , now generally accepted , that the Earth ' s crust moved laterally away from long , volcanically active oceanic ridges . He only understood his ocean floor profiles across the North Pacific Ocean after Bruce Heezen ( 1953 , Lamont Group ) discovered the Great Global Rift , running along the Mid - Atlantic Ridge . " Seafloor spreading " , as the process was later named , helped establish Alfred Wegener ' s earlier ( but generally dismissed at the time ) concept of continental drift as scientifically respectable . This triggered a revolution in the earth sciences . Hess ' s report was formally published in his " History of Ocean Basins " ( 1962 ) , which for a time was the single most referenced work in solid - earth geophysics . Hess was also involved in many other scientific endeavours , including the Mohole project ( 1957 – 1966 ) , an investigation onto the feasibility and techniques of deep sea drilling . Death . Hess died from a heart attack in Woods Hole , Massachusetts , on August 25 , 1969 , while chairing a meeting of the Space Science Board of the National Academy of Sciences . He was buried in the Arlington National Cemetery and was posthumously awarded the National Aeronautics and Space Administration ' s Distinguished Public Service Award . The American Geophysical Union established the Harry H . Hess medal in his memory in 1984 to " honor outstanding achievements in research of the constitution and evolution of Earth and sister planets . "