By Donald Gilpin

W. Jason Morgan
(Princeton University, Denise Applewhite)

W. Jason Morgan (1935-2023), a pioneer in the field of plate tectonics and a Princeton University professor of geology and geophysics from 1966 to 2003, will be honored on Saturday, October 7, with a Celebration of Life at the Princeton University Chapel, followed by a luncheon and memorial symposium at Guyot Hall on the University campus organized by the Department of Geosciences and the Morgan family.

Morgan, who received his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1964, was the Knox Taylor Professor of Geology emeritus and a professor of geophysics emeritus. He died at his home in Beverly, Mass., on July 31, 2023.

Described in a geosciences department statement as “an enormously influential figure in shaping our understanding of the movements of our planet’s surface and its interior,” Morgan was awarded the National Medal of Science in 2002 “for his development of the theories of plate tectonics and of deep mantle plumes, which revolutionized our understanding of the geological forces that control the Earth’s crust and deep interior and consequently influence the evolution of the Earth’s life and climate.”

Other scientists had helped to provide evidence for the movement of the continents, according to a Princeton University press release, but Morgan was the “first to identify that our planet’s surface is broken into about 20 plates underlying both continents and oceans, and that these plates can separate, collide, or slide side-by-side, thus linking together the San Andreas Fault, the Pacific Ocean’s volcanic ‘ring of fire,’ mid-oceanic ridges, and many other geological phenomena to a cohesive model.”

At a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in 1967, Morgan was scheduled to present a paper on underwater trenches. With only a short time to prepare, he switched topics and instead of focusing on trenches he presented to the assembled geologists his ground-breaking theory of plate tectonics. He followed up with a landmark paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research in March 1968.

“Jason Morgan, the physicist, was to geology what Darwin, the geologist, was to biology — towering figures with probing, synthetic minds, who became synonymous with the paradigm shifts they engendered,” wrote Frederik Simons, associate chair of the Princeton University Department of Geosciences, in a tribute to Morgan on the University’s memorial page. “Evolution for Darwin, plate tectonics for Jason Morgan and the very few peers of his generation.”

“Jason was a giant in our field,” Simons added in an email.

Lincoln Hollister, Princeton University emeritus geosciences professor and a longtime friend of Morgan, wrote on the memorial page, “Jason Morgan was the last man who knew everything. He was not just a pioneer in geology; he grasped the full historical context for geological details and was fully aware of how each detail connected to everything else.”

Hollister went on to quote a tribute written by one of Morgan’s former students. “Jason was a professor at Princeton when I was a graduate student 40 years ago,” the student wrote. “He was one of the kindest, lowest key, but most erudite and wisest people I have known. He was foremost among those who shaped and developed the modern theory of plate tectonics and put it on a sound theoretical basis. If there were a Nobel Prize in earth sciences, Jason would certainly have received it.”

Morgan was born in Savannah, Georgia. His father owned a hardware and dry goods store and his mother was a French teacher and volunteer with the Girl Scouts of America. He graduated from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1955, then served in the Navy as an instructor at its Nuclear Power School for two years before moving to Princeton in 1957 to pursue his graduate studies.

In 1959 Morgan married Cary Goldschmidt, who died in 1991. In addition to their children, Jason Morgan, a geophysicist, and Michele Morgan, a curator at Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, he is survived by six grandchildren.

In addition to the National Medal of Science, Morgan’s awards include the Japan Prize (1990); the Maurice Ewing Medal (1997), jointly sponsored by the American Geophysical Union and the U.S. Navy; the Leon Lutaud Prize of the French Academy of Sciences (1986); and the Alfred Wegener Medal of the European Geosciences Union (1983). He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1982.

The October 7 W. Jason Morgan Memorial Symposium, following the 11 a.m. University Chapel memorial service and a luncheon, will start at 2 p.m. with a welcome by Simons and Department of Geosciences Chair Thomas Duffy, followed by a retrospective on Morgan’s scientific career by Morgan’s son, who is a professor at Southern University of Science and Technology; and prepared remarks by other professors and scholars.