Walter C. Pitman, III

Walter C. Pitman III ( born October 21, 1931 in Newark, New Jersey) is an American geophysicist.

Pitman studied electrical engineering at Lehigh University ( BA 1956). He then worked for the Hazeltine Corporation and from 1960 as a technician in the oceanographic research ships of the Lamont - Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. Among other things, he was responsible on expeditions in the Atlantic and Pacific for the magnetometer. At the same time he began a study of Geophysics, completed his doctorate in 1967 from Columbia University. In his doctoral thesis under James Heirtzler he confirmed the plate tectonic hypothesis of Vine, Matthews and Morley the formation of the ocean floor by detecting symmetric magnetic stripe pattern on both sides of the mid-ocean ridges. He became a professor at Columbia University, where he is now Professor Emeritus.

Further paleomagnetic measurements on ocean floors served Manik Talwani and Pitman 1971/72 to reconstruct the history of the North Atlantic. In 1974 he published with Larson and Herron a World Atlas of paleomagnetic patterns on the ocean floors. Then he turned to the effects of plate tectonics on sea level fluctuations.

In 1998 he was awarded the Alexander Agassiz Medal and in 2000 the Vetlesen price.

In 1996 he received the Maurice Ewing Medal of the American Geophysical Union. He is also known for his studies of the catastrophic flooding of the Black Sea around 5600 BC