T. Wayland Vaughan

Thomas Wayland Vaughan ( born September 20, 1870 in Jonesville, Texas, † January 16, 1952 in Washington DC) was an American geologist, marine biologist, paleontologist and oceanographer. It dealt mainly with fossil and recent corals and coral reefs.

Vaughan studied from 1885 at the Tulane University, first medicine, then physics. From 1889, he taught physics and chemistry in Mount Lebanon (Louisiana ), startet to collect fossils and published botanical and zoological work. He completed a degree in biology from Harvard University in 1894 with a Master from, was from 1894 Assistant Geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey and was awarded his doctorate in 1903 on fossil corals of the Oligocene and Eocene of the United States. From 1901 to 1914 he was engaged in geological and oceanographic field research in the Caribbean, in 1911 in the Panama Canal Zone, 1919-1921 in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, 1919 in the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico and 1907-1923 on the Gulf Coast and the Atlantic Coast. From 1908 to 1915 he studied the coral reefs in the Bahamas and in Florida on behalf of the Smithsonian Institution. In addition to coral he also studied foraminifera.

From 1924 to 1936 he was director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography ( which got its present name under his director shank ). In 1935 he was awarded the Alexander Agassiz Medal of the National Academy of Sciences, 1945, the Mary Clark Thompson Medal and 1946, the Penrose Medal. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Oceanographic Committee, he led in the 1930s. During this time he also supported the establishment of a counterpart to Scripps Institution on the east coast, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

In advanced age he began to be interested in the Japanese language and East Asian art and was also professor of East Asian art. He was received by Japanese Emperor in 1933 in a private audience, and received in 1940 the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun 3rd class.

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