ABSTRACT
Earth scientists who were active during the 1960s were able to witness, and in some cases to be a part of, the coming of plate tectonics, one of the great happenings in the history of earth science. Early in the history of Lamont, in the 1950s, Maurice Ewingwas often active on a day-to-day basis in earthquake seismology. Innumerable other seismologists also deserve credit for helping to bring seismology to the point where it was ready to make some major contributions to the plate tectonics revolution. Ewing, an outstanding seismologist among other things, was the founder and director of Lamont. Lamont was clearly a good, perhaps the best, place for a seismologist to be when the plate tectonics story was beginning. The inductive style was important early in seismology through study of seismicity and focal mechanisms and later in discovery of the nature of the subduction process in Tonga – Fiji.
