career and I am very grateful to him for his help in creating the international
‘‘hotspot project’’ during the early 1980s.
Félix Avedik, Bertrand Sichler, Yaoling Niu, Steve Scott, Nicolas Binard,
Rodey Batiza, and Jill Karsten, are just a few of the names of other colleagues
who have impacted my life on a professional and personal level. In fact, in looking
over the list of my publications on my Curriculum Vitae, I realize just how
important the co-authors of my papers were during a few months or during my
entire career and my lifetime.
I think Chuck Fray got it absolutely right when he told me how important it is to
work with others, not for yourself, and to aim for the good of the science you are
trying to accomplish. My publications wouldn’t have been possible without the
collaboration and friendship I have shared with so many of the other people listed
in my bibliography.
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO)
Among the most prestigious oceanographic institutions in the world is the LamontDoherty Oceanographic Observatory of Columbia University in New York, often
called ‘‘Lamont’’ for short. A beacon of oceanography and scientific research,
located on the on Hudson River about 30 km north of Manhattan on the Palisades
cliffs, Lamont is essentially oriented towards the fields of geophysics, magnetism,
sea floor structure and morphology, sedimentology and geochemistry.
I was born in 1935 in Marseilles, France. Nothing in my background indicated
that I would become involved in such an exciting field as undersea geology. My
parents were refugees who had been welcomed to France after the Armenian
genocide in 1915, and my father was a prisoner of war during World War II, so he
was absent from my life for 5 years. I was raised in an Armenian speaking home
where my parents, grandparents, and my Uncle and Aunt all lived together. When I
was only 13, my family decided to send me away to an Armenian Catholic secondary boarding school in Venice Italy, and after high-school I continued my
studies, in land geology, at the University of Pisa, where I obtained a Masters
Degree in 1962.
During my busy, early years adapting to various cultures and languages, I
always hoped to live a life of adventure like Marco Polo or Charles Lindberg, so it
was only natural that I would be attracted to the new frontier which oceanography
represented in the early 1960s.
When I arrived in the USA in the summer of 1962, I was hoping to find a job in
the field of geology. Through the help of my cousins Birj and Diran Deckmejian,
who shared their living space with me, and thanks to my cousin Albert Barsamian,
who contacted someone he knew, I was granted an interview at Lamont with
Charles Fray. Chuck was looking for a geologist to spend time at sea; even though
my English wasn’t very good, he hired me for a trial period of 1 year. My mission
was to spend several months at a time at sea with the research team from Lamont
8
1 An Overview of Oceanographic Exploration
‘‘hotspot project’’ during the early 1980s.
Félix Avedik, Bertrand Sichler, Yaoling Niu, Steve Scott, Nicolas Binard,
Rodey Batiza, and Jill Karsten, are just a few of the names of other colleagues
who have impacted my life on a professional and personal level. In fact, in looking
over the list of my publications on my Curriculum Vitae, I realize just how
important the co-authors of my papers were during a few months or during my
entire career and my lifetime.
I think Chuck Fray got it absolutely right when he told me how important it is to
work with others, not for yourself, and to aim for the good of the science you are
trying to accomplish. My publications wouldn’t have been possible without the
collaboration and friendship I have shared with so many of the other people listed
in my bibliography.
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO)
Among the most prestigious oceanographic institutions in the world is the LamontDoherty Oceanographic Observatory of Columbia University in New York, often
called ‘‘Lamont’’ for short. A beacon of oceanography and scientific research,
located on the on Hudson River about 30 km north of Manhattan on the Palisades
cliffs, Lamont is essentially oriented towards the fields of geophysics, magnetism,
sea floor structure and morphology, sedimentology and geochemistry.
I was born in 1935 in Marseilles, France. Nothing in my background indicated
that I would become involved in such an exciting field as undersea geology. My
parents were refugees who had been welcomed to France after the Armenian
genocide in 1915, and my father was a prisoner of war during World War II, so he
was absent from my life for 5 years. I was raised in an Armenian speaking home
where my parents, grandparents, and my Uncle and Aunt all lived together. When I
was only 13, my family decided to send me away to an Armenian Catholic secondary boarding school in Venice Italy, and after high-school I continued my
studies, in land geology, at the University of Pisa, where I obtained a Masters
Degree in 1962.
During my busy, early years adapting to various cultures and languages, I
always hoped to live a life of adventure like Marco Polo or Charles Lindberg, so it
was only natural that I would be attracted to the new frontier which oceanography
represented in the early 1960s.
When I arrived in the USA in the summer of 1962, I was hoping to find a job in
the field of geology. Through the help of my cousins Birj and Diran Deckmejian,
who shared their living space with me, and thanks to my cousin Albert Barsamian,
who contacted someone he knew, I was granted an interview at Lamont with
Charles Fray. Chuck was looking for a geologist to spend time at sea; even though
my English wasn’t very good, he hired me for a trial period of 1 year. My mission
was to spend several months at a time at sea with the research team from Lamont
8
1 An Overview of Oceanographic Exploration