Griggs, David T.

Griggs, David T. (Tressel)

(1911–74) geophysicist; born in Columbus, Ohio. He taught at Harvard (1934–41) and was a section chief at Project Rand, Douglas Aircraft Corporation (1946–48), before becoming a professor of geophysics at the University of California: Los Angeles in 1948. He proposed that crushing convection currents in the earth's interior led to mountain (and possibly continent) formation. He is also known as an advocate of peaceful uses of atomic energy.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.