Ronald George Mason (Winsor, Hampshire, England, 24 December 1916 – London, 16 July 2009) was one of theoceanographers whose pioneeringCold Wargeomagnetic survey work lead to the discovery ofmagnetic striping on the seafloor. First discovering magnetic stripes on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean off theUnited States West Coast, he later also identified them around theMid-Atlantic Ridge.[1][2]
Mason received his doctorate in geophysics atImperial College, London, in 1947.
In 1955, while onsabbatical at theCalifornia Institute of Technology inPasadena,California, Mason secured permission to embark and tow the ASQ-3Afluxgate magnetometer, developed byVictor Vacquier of theScripps Institution of Oceanography, behind theUnited States Coast and Geodetic Survey'ssurvey shipUSC&GSPioneer (OSS 31) while she participated in a joint survey effort with the U.S. Navy. Scripps was cooperating in order to map any magnetic anomalies the magnetometer detected on the seafloor.[3][4] During the summer of 1955, Mason arranged to have the ASQ-3A – originally designed for use aboard aircraft – housed in a non-magnetic, fishlike container, making it the first marine magnetometer. In August 1955,Pioneer conducted a survey in thePacific Ocean along theUnited States West Coast fromPoint Conception, California, toCape Flattery,Washington, with Mason aboard and the ASQ-3A trailing in her wake in its container. Within hours, Mason detected an unmistakable pattern of north-south magnetic "stripes" in the seafloor rocks; asPioneer's cruise continued, Mason continued to observe this pattern throughout the survey area. Mason's work aboardPioneer with the fluxgate magnetometer thus revealed "magnetic striping" on the floor of the Pacific, the first time it had been noted anywhere.[5] The magnetic data he collected from the ocean crust later was interpreted as containing field reversals that were used by Canadian geophysicistLawrence Morley to proveseafloor spreading andplate tectonics.
Mason was appointed to the Chair of Pure Geophysics at Imperial College in 1967 and became head of the college's Geophysics Department in 1977. During the 1980s, he pioneered extremely accurate techniques for measuring the Earth's crust which further confirmed plate tectonic movements.
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