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Award-Winning Scientists

February 25, 2017

WHOI emeritus scientists Jack Whitehead (left) and Stan Hart conduct a geophysical fluid dynamics lab experiment in 1991. They inject a flow of light syrup (dyed blue) into a tank of Karo syrup to simulate the physics at work when plumes of magma deep in Earth’s mantle rise buoyantly to Earth’s surface and erupt to create islands such as Hawaii. Hart investigated the chemical makeup of plumes, and in 1999 he explored Vailulu’u, a seafloor volcano that eventually will become a new Samoan island. Whitehead investigated how ocean currents form and flow. The American Geophysical Union awarded Hart its William Bowie Medal in 2016. Whitehead received the AGU’s Maurice Ewing Medal in 2014. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution )