Dr. Richard N. Hey

Photo of Richard Hey and an iguana. Click on the above image to see a larger version.

Hey received his B.S. from Caltech in 1969, majoring in Geology for many reasons, including the fieldtrips and Bob Sharp's teaching. He began his graduate work at Princeton with Harry Hess, got advice about seafloor spreading analysis from Fred Vine, learned to teach from Ken Deffeyes, and was fortunate enough to end up working with Jason Morgan in the early days of plate tectonics. His Ph.D. work used triple junction geometry to analyze plate motions in the East Pacific, and showed that the seemingly fatal geometrical objections to the hotspot hypothesis in the Galapagos area could be resolved if small ridge jumps had produced asymmetric accretion. This work established Galapagos as a hotspot and showed that evolution producing the "peculiar organic beings" there had been considerably faster than Darwin and others had thought.

Doc Ewing gave him his first real job, at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute in Galveston, where he showed the Galapagos ridge jumps occurred in systematic patterns, which led him to the propagating rift hypothesis for how the Earth's accretional plate boundary geometry is reorganized. Moving to the University of Hawaii, he initiated the Marine Magnetics Lab, which included Clyde Nishimura, Doug Wilson, and young Jason (later Phipps) Morgan, as well as the Crack of Noon film production company, also involving Fred Duennebier and Grant Blackinton. This work, mostly in the Galapagos and Juan de Fuca areas, and including computer graphics animation movies, showed the importance of hotspot-ridge interactions and made the propagating rift hypothesis a well-established part of plate tectonic theory, with significant petrologic implications mostly worked out by John Sinton and Dave Christie

Moving to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, he directed the Plate Tectonics Lab from 1981-1986. This lab included grad students Marty Kleinrock, David Naar, and Dave Caress, programmer Mike Keeler, student help/secretary Andra Bobbitt, and Bill Menard after he returned from the USGS, as well as Tom Jordan and John Orcutt at lunch on Fridays. These were also very productive years, with numerous oceanographic expeditions using state of the art equipment including SeaBeam, SeaMARC II, GLORIA, Deep-Tow, and ALVIN, leading to important advances in understanding Galapagos rift propagation and the anomalous Easter Microplate area, as well as changes in direction of seafloor spreading and evolution of the great Pacific fracture zones.

Since 1986 he has been teaching and doing research at the University of Hawaii, where his recent students and postdocs have included Laurie Skaer Fernandez, Fernando Martinez, Paul Johnson, Debbie Pardee, and Andy Gascho. One major area of current research involves structural and hydrothermal investigations of Earth's fastest seafloor spreading center, the East Pacific Rise between the Easter and Juan Fernandez microplates, where the plate boundary geometry is presently being reorganized by a giant duelling propagator system which may be an initial stage in microplate formation

His other current research efforts are in the Pito Deep area of the Easter Microplate, including submersible and ROV investigations of the deepest rift valley on Earth, and Iceland, where two of his recent oceanographic expeditions have investigated nascent rifting near Surtsey in Vestmannaeyjar, and the initial seafloor spreading segment offshore of the Reykjanes Peninsula. A major Reykjanes Ridge expedition has just been funded by NSF, and is now scheduled for the summer of 2007.

He has also done some research in other areas, including back-arc basins, paleoceanography, and continental tectonics. He has been elected a Fellow of both the Geological Society of America and the American Geophysical Union, where he was cited “For the discovery and development of the concept of propagating rifts, the mechanism by which oceanic accretionary plate boundaries are reorganized.” In his free time he used to travel, ski, and work out with his wife Donna, beat back attacks of the bamboo jungle, occasionally break 80 golfing, and was widely regarded as the SOEST poker player of the last millennium. Since the birth of his son Dylan concepts such as free time are being reevaluated.

Interested students should apply to the Geology and Geophysics Department of the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology.

 

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