Instructor at Scripps for 37 Years : Oceanographer Marston C. Sargent Dies

Marston C. Sargent, a distinguished oceanographer and inventor who was affiliated with the UC San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography for more than 40 years, died Thursday in his San Diego home of complications after a stroke. He was 80.

Sargent also served in the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research and was the ONR’s scientific liaison when he retired from the Naval Reserve as a lieutenant commander in 1970. During his Navy tenure, Sargent worked in the research and development of underwater sound equipment.

However, it was at Scripps Institution, which he joined as a biology instructor in 1937, where Sargent made his mark in underwater science. Sargent joined Scripps after a three-year stint as a research assistant at California Institute of Technology, where he earned a doctoral degree in biophysics in 1934.

Sargent was a co-inventor of an electric device for the rapid digitization of records compiled with the mechanical bathythermograph, an instrument for logging underwater temperatures. This breakthrough in measuring underwater temperatures enabled scientists for the first time to quickly log large amounts of data on ocean conditions. He also became an authority on photosynthesis, and his research on the growth requirements of marine plankton algae won him international acclaim.

Edward A. Friedman, director of Scripps Institution, said Sargent’s “contributions as a scientist and inventor made him a major figure in the evolution of modern-day oceanography.”

Sargent retired from Scripps in 1974, but he continued as a research associate with the Marine Life Research Group at Scripps until 1980.

He was born in Somerville, Mass., in 1906 and was graduated from Harvard in 1929 with a degree in biology. He is survived by his wife of 53 years, Grace; a daughter, Jean Ann Sargent Greene of Lanham, Md.; a son, Tom Sargent of Yorba Linda, and four grandchildren.

Funeral services are pending.