Doug Webb’s innovations helped transform how we study the ocean. Starting out as an electronics research assistant at WHOI in 1962, Webb’s inventive mind and skill for problem-solving led to quick promotions and a legacy in ocean research that is still benefiting science today.

Webb is best known as the inventor of the underwater glider, an autonomous vehicle that moves through the ocean by changing its internal buoyancy instead of using propellers for propulsion. This breakthrough design enabled these energy-efficient instruments to collect temperature, salinity, and current data across vast distances with minimal human support. In 1982, he founded Webb Research Corporation and continued developing ocean technology, including the Slocum glider, which remains one of the most widely used ocean-observing tools today. The Ocean Observatories Initiative, housed at WHOI, operates the world’s largest civilian fleet of Slocum gliders.

Before his work on gliders, Webb developed several other pioneering ocean instruments, including deep-sea acoustic transponders and early prototypes of vertical profiling floats that later inspired technologies like the floats used in the global Argo program. He also published a seminal paper alongside Roger Payne in 1971, hypothesizing that the songs of fin whales could be heard across vast distances, and suggested that noise from commercial shipping might interfere with whale communication. The idea, which seemed far-fetched at the time, is now widely accepted.

A visionary with a deep curiosity about how the ocean works, Webb bridged physics, engineering, and exploration throughout his career. His legacy lives on in the countless autonomous vehicles collecting data from the depths, and in WHOI’s continued mission to push the limits of ocean observation.