Kenneth O. Emery

Kenneth Orris Emery (1914–1998) was a Canadian-born American marine geologist.

Biography Emery grew up in Texas and studied engineering at North Texas Agricultural College. He then studied geology at the University of Illinois, where he received in 1935 a B.S. and in 1939 an M.S. In 1937 he and another graduate student, Robert S. Dietz, moved with their mentor Francis Parker Shepard from the University of Illinois to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. There Emery pursued doctoral research on the California continental margin. He received in 1941 his Ph.D. in geology from the University of Illinois. During WW II, he worked in San Diego and produced maps for the U.S. Navy of sediment types from oceanographic surveys. The maps were important for acoustic submarine warfare and scientific understanding of continental margins. At the end of WW II he moved to Los Angeles and joined the faculty of the University of Southern California (USC) as an assistant professor and was later promoted to full professor.

For the academic year 1958–1959 he was on a leave of absence as a Guggenheim Fellow.

During his years at WHOI, he embarked on an extensive survey of the continental margins of the Atlantic ocean, a project finally completed in 1973, with the help of WHOI's Atlantis II, the first academic research vessel equipped with a seagoing computer lab.

His marriage of 42 years ended with the death of his wife in 1983. Upon his death he was survived by two daughters and a granddaughter. 1968 — Foreign member of Academia Sinica 1969 — Francis P. Shepard Medal for Marine Geology, Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists 1971 — Member of the National Academy of Sciences 1971 — Prince Albert I Medal 1974 — Compass Distinguished Achievement Award, Marine Technical Society 1977 — Foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 1985 — Maurice Ewing Medal 1989 — William H. Twenhofel Medal

Selected publications

(pbk reprint of 1984 original) (pbk reprint of 1994 original)