April 3, 1980 – Death of Edward Bullard, one of the founders of marine geophysics

The physicist, geologist and geophysicist, Edward "Teddy" Crisp Bullard, was born on September 21, 1907 in Norwich (United Kingdom), and died on April 3, 1980 in La Jolla (United States).

Bullard studied Natural Sciences at Clare College, Cambridge, having the opportunity to receive classes from Ernest Rutherford at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University. In 1930 he received a doctorate in nuclear physics. However, at that time nuclear physics did not offer many job opportunities, so he decided to specialize in geophysics.

During World War II he worked as an experimental officer on HMS Vernon developing special techniques to protect ships from magnetic mines. He also carried out studies on the ocean floor and became one of the most important geophysicists of his time.

From 1948 to 1950 he worked as a professor at the University of Toronto, becoming head of the National Physical Laboratory from 1950 to 1955. In 1953 he was awarded the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society, for his important contribution to the development of physics of the earth. In 1955 he returned to Cambridge as a research assistant and later as an assistant. From 1964 to 1974 he was a geophysics instructor at the same university. In 1974 he retired and moved to California, where he died in 1980.

Among his most relevant contributions, the estimation, together with Walter Elsasser, of the terrestrial magnetized field as a consequence of the rotation of the metallic nucleus of the Earth (hypothesis of the dimano) stands out. As an expert in plate tectonics, he reconstructed, using a computer, the mosaic that the continents formed 150 million years ago before their separation. With this experiment he discovered that the continents fit together almost perfectly, substantiating the idea already suggested by another geophysicist, Alfred Wegener.