What is bruce c. heezen?

Bruce C. Heezen was an American geologist and oceanographer who played a major role in the development of the theory of plate tectonics. He was born on April 11, 1924, in Vinton, Iowa, and grew up in Muscatine, Iowa. He attended the University of Iowa and Columbia University, where he received his doctorate in geology in 1957.

Heezen is best known for his work on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a 12,000-mile-long underwater mountain range that runs down the center of the Atlantic Ocean. He was part of a team of scientists who discovered that the ridge was actually a seam where two massive plates of the Earth's crust were pulling apart. This discovery led to the development of the theory of plate tectonics, which explains how the Earth's crust is broken into a series of plates that move and interact with one another.

In addition to his work on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Heezen also mapped other parts of the ocean floor and made several other important discoveries, including the existence of undersea canyons and giant underwater landslides. He was a professor at Columbia University and served as the director of the university's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory from 1959 to 1977. Heezen died suddenly of a heart attack on June 21, 1977, while on a research expedition to study the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.