Content area
Full Text
20 MARCH 1921 * 2 AUGUST 2003
HATTEN S. YODER JR., a member of the American Philosophical Society since 1979, died on 2 August 2003, at Suburban Hospital, Bethesda, Md., with his family, colleagues, and friends at his side. His death followed complications from surgery.
Yoder was born on 20 March 1921 and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. On 1 August 1959, he married Elizabeth Marie Bruffey. They lived in Bethesda and had two children, Hatten S. Yoder III and Karen M. Wallace.
After graduating from Lakewood High School (Ohio), Yoder obtained his bachelor's degree at the University of Chicago in 1940, completed his postgraduate work at the University of Minnesota in 1941, and received his Ph.D. in geology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1948. Yoder was also awarded honorary doctoral degrees from the University of Paris VI in 1981 and from the Colorado School of Mines in 1995.
He was experimental petrologist (1948-71), director (1971-86), and emeritus director (1986-2003) of the Geophysical Laboratory, Carnegie Institution, Washington, D.C. His career at the Geophysical Laboratory was augmented with stints as visiting professor at Caltech (1958), the University of Texas (1964), the University of Colorado (1966), and the University of Cape Town (1967). He was a lieutenant commander in the USNR (1942-58), and served as meteorologist in both the Pacific and European theaters during World War II.
Yoder was one of the world's leading experts on the origin of basalt, a common volcanic rock that underlies much of the ocean floor and comprises Hawaii, Iceland, and...