DISTRIBUTION OF CONTINENTS, MOUNTAINS, OCEAN DEEPS, AS CONSIDERED BY ROSS GUNN (1947, 1949)

The December 1967 issue of Monthly Weather Review collects 25 papers, mostly on thunderstorms, as a prompt memorial from meteorologists honoring Ross Gunn (1897-1966). The memorial starts with a bibliography of 130 papers by Gunn and lists 43 “patents issued to Ross Gunn” (Reichelderfer, 1967). Gunn had a PhD in physics, Yale 1926. Philip H. Abelson (1998) prepared Gunn’s Biographical Memoir for the National Academy of Sciences. Abelson had moved from Carnegie Institution of Washington to join Gunn at the Naval Research Laboratory in June 1941 to work on uranium separation, just prior to U.S. engagement in World War II. Abelson (1998) states that their work on uranium separation “shortened the duration of World War II by eight days.” Among other topics, Gunn had worked in the 1920s on drones, in the 1930s on nuclear power for submarines, in the 1940s on cloud precipitation.

Among Gunn’s 130 papers, at least 14 deal with geology and solid earth geophysics. The two final such reports were “Isostasy – Extended”, Journal of Geology (1949) and “Quantitative Aspects of Juxtaposed Ocean Deeps, Mountain Chains, and Volcanic Ranges”, Geophysics (1947). These deal on fundamental levels with questions often covered qualitatively by writers at that time. Gunn (1897-1966) and Arthur Holmes (1890-1965) were nearly contemporary, but I found no evidence that either Gunn or Holmes made published reference to the other’s work. Gunn made few references to the work of others, but he did reference Pratt, Airy, Guttenberg, Bowie, Jeffreys, and Wagener (a fellow meteorologist who was alive at the beginning of Gunn’s career). Gunn worked almost entirely in a meteorological setting, which may have lessened the impact of his continental/mountain/sea floor ideas.

A closer examination of Gunn’s work dealing with continents and ocean basins seems merited.