Background
Kenneth Orris Emery or K.O., as he preferred to be called, was born June 6, 1914, in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, Canada and grew up in Texas.
1939
Scripps Institution of Oceanography: Front Row: Francis P. Shepard, Kenneth O. Emery, Tschudy, Unidentified, Willingham, Claude E. ZoBell, Marston Sargent, Eugene C. LaFond, R. Gordon; Standing: Miller, S. Crane, Wladyslaw Gorczynski; R.B. Tibby, George F. McEwen, J. Lyman, J.C. Hindman, W.R. Whedon, Martin W. Johnson, S. Rittenberg, L. Anderson, Stanley Chambers, Ruth Ragan, P. Doudoroff, Erik G. Moberg, Harald U. Sverdrup, Richard H. Fleming, Tillie Genter, H. Stewart, J. Gilbert, Denis L. Fox, Percy S. Barnhart, Carl I. Johnson, T. Johnson, O. Miller, J. Ross, B. Simmons, B. Giroux
1950
MidPac Expedition, 1950: Back: James Marion Snodgrass, Arthur E. Maxwell, Jeffery Frautschy, Lew Garrison, Ned Barr; Front: Russell Raitt, Kenneth O. Emery, Robert Floyd Dill, Roger Revelle, Edwin L. Hamilton, Ed Brayton, Tom Runyon, Bob Huffer; Richard Y. Morita squatting in front
1938
Lowering sediment trap from Scripps Institution of Oceanography pier, with Kenneth Orris Emery in the foreground
1938
Robert Sinclair Dietz (left) and Kenneth Orris Emery, when they were under the tutelage of Francis Shepard, at Scripps Institution of Oceanography
1939
Scripps Institution of Oceanography: Front Row: Francis P. Shepard, Kenneth O. Emery, Tschudy, Unidentified, Willingham, Claude E. ZoBell, Marston Sargent, Eugene C. LaFond, R. Gordon; Standing: Miller, S. Crane, Wladyslaw Gorczynski; R.B. Tibby, George F. McEwen, J. Lyman, J.C. Hindman, W.R. Whedon, Martin W. Johnson, S. Rittenberg, L. Anderson, Stanley Chambers, Ruth Ragan, P. Doudoroff, Erik G. Moberg, Harald U. Sverdrup, Richard H. Fleming, Tillie Genter, H. Stewart, J. Gilbert, Denis L. Fox, Percy S. Barnhart, Carl I. Johnson, T. Johnson, O. Miller, J. Ross, B. Simmons, B. Giroux
1950
MidPac Expedition, 1950: Back: James Marion Snodgrass, Arthur E. Maxwell, Jeffery Frautschy, Lew Garrison, Ned Barr; Front: Russell Raitt, Kenneth O. Emery, Robert Floyd Dill, Roger Revelle, Edwin L. Hamilton, Ed Brayton, Tom Runyon, Bob Huffer; Richard Y. Morita squatting in front
701 W Nedderman Dr, Arlington, TX 76019, USA
Emery studied engineering at North Texas Agricultural College in Arlington.
Champaign, IL, USA
Emery received a Master of Science degree in geology from the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana in 1939.
One William Maxwell Ln, Springfield, IL 62703, USA
Emery studied geology at the University of Illinois, where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1935. He also received his doctorate there in 1941.
Emery, Herbert Mann and Francis Parker Shepard reading aboard R/V E.W. Scripps
Dr Kenneth O. Emery (left), in charge of the joint WHOI
educator oceanographer author scholars
Kenneth Orris Emery or K.O., as he preferred to be called, was born June 6, 1914, in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, Canada and grew up in Texas.
Emery studied engineering at North Texas Agricultural College in Arlington and geology at the University of Illinois, where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1935. His academic and research life started at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, where his teacher and mentor was Francis P. Shepard, considered by many the "father" of marine geology.
Emery then received a Master of Science degree in geology in 1939 and moved to La Jolla, California, where he was a guest at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography for two years while pursuing his doctoral research on the California continental margins. He received his Doctorate in geology from the University of Illinois in 1941.
In 1941, Emery began to work as an assistant geologist for the Illinois State Geological Survey. Later, during World War II, he served as a marine geologist in the Division of War Research at the University of California in San Diego, producing maps of sediment types that were important for acoustic submarine warfare but also proved valuable to later studies by Emery and others of continental margins.
After the war, Emery moved to Los Angeles, where he had taught geology for 16 years as an assistant professor and later professor at the University of Southern California and did research in the Gulf of California. Between 1946 and 1960 he also worked, mostly part-time, for the U.S. Geological Survey, and served as Oceanographer at the Navy Ordnance Test Center in Pasadena from 1960 to 1962.
In 1962, Emery's research interests brought him to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, where his studies included much of the rest of the world. At WHOI, he recruited a group of young geologists who became the core of a marine geology group in what was then a department of geophysics. He was named a Senior Scientist in 1963, was the Henry Bryant Bigelow Oceanographer from 1975 to 1979, and was named a Scientist Emeritus in 1979. In 1968, Emery also became the first Dean of the new Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution/ Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint Graduate Program.
Even many years after retirement, Emery continued to spend several hours each day at his office at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, reading and conferring with colleagues. In his last months, he worked to recruit new members to the National Academy of Sciences and to encourage scientists to become broader in their interests and to write more books.
Emery believed synthesis to be the most important duty of a scientist. He also felt that knowledge of oil and gas was never a bad thing and that shorter delivery routes promised reduced degradation of the ocean environment from oil spills, a position that sometimes brought him into a dispute with environmentalists.
Emery was a member of many professional organizations, including the National Academy of Sciences, Marine Technology Society, American Geophysical Union, Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists, Royal Swedish Academy of Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
As a scientist, Kenneth Emery was plain-spoken, energetic, and prompt. He was disciplined in planning his work, carrying it out, and reporting the results. He also loved to engage younger colleagues in discussion to test out his ideas in addition to stimulating their thought. He never hesitated to open such discussions, of great benefit to the geologists of occupied Japan when he visited there just after the war.
Wherever Emery went, he was a mentor and left his influence. He was open to new ideas and sought out new techniques; by challenging both ideas and techniques, he kept the ones that worked. The new idea had to be useful and the technique had to reveal new information.
Emery is survived by two daughters, Barbara K. Wish and Charlet E. Shave; and by two brothers, Almon C. Emery and Harold B. Emery. His wife of 42 years, Caroline (Kay) Alexander Emery died in 1983.