Elizabeth Noble Shor

Elizabeth Noble Shor (April 21, 1930 – October 13, 2013) was an American historian and scientist.

Her entire career was at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (Scripps) in La Jolla, California.

Elizabeth Louise Noble ("Betty Lou" or "Betty") was born in Boston on April 21, 1930.

Her father was James Alexander Noble, a professor of geology, and her mother was Marion Louise Goldthwaite.

She spent most of her childhood in South Dakota, however, after her father became chief geologist for the Homestake Mining Company there.

She graduated high school in Lead, South Dakota, as valedictorian.

Her family moved to Pasadena, California, after her father became a professor of mining geology at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1947.

She attended Pasadena City College for a year, before transferring to Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts to study zoology for two years.

Shor met her husband George Shor while he was a student at Caltech.

Shor married George Shor in Pasadena and the couple moved to Texas in 1950.

After a time working in oil exploration in Texas, George Shor returned again to Caltech in 1951 for his doctoral work in seismology and geology under Charles Richter, obtaining his degree in 1954.

Her husband's doctoral work employed explosive shots to make measurements of the Mohorovičić discontinuity, the boundary layer between the Earth's crust and mantle.

In 1952 a major earthquake flooded the Richter laboratory with more data than they could handle.

While Shor was visiting the laboratory with her infant son, she began asking questions about the work, and Richter hired her as a laboratory assistant.

Such a paid job in science was unusual for women at the time, and it provided Shor an entrance into a career of laboratory work.

The Scripps population in 1952, including scientists, staff, and students, numbered 415 people and Roger Revelle was director.

Shor joined the lively wive's support group Oceanids, which was to have a large impact on life at Scripps, as well as its institutions, and that of the University of California at San Diego when it was founded a decade later.

Shor played an active role in community activities, developed an interest in historical writing, and continued her career as a laboratory assistant.

Shor followed her husband to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1953.

Shor became a noted historian for Scripps.

When the Shors arrived at Scripps in 1953, the Scripps community was small and close knit.

After the project won an initial grant for exploratory study in 1958, Shor's husband became involved because of his recent work on seismic measurements of the Moho discontinuity.

Indeed, he was able to suggest the first suitable drilling site near Guadalupe Island, Mexico.

George Shor served as a principal investigator for the project.

He and Russell Raitt contributed to several Mohole committees and led expeditions to the Hawaiian Islands to determine the best drilling location for the project.

The project suffered from political and scientific opposition, mismanagement, and cost overruns.

Beginning in 1962, Shor worked as laboratory assistant for ichthyologist Carl L. Hubbs at Scripps.

The U.S. House of Representatives defunded it in 1966.

Shor

developed a lengthy chronology of the debacle.

After his death in 1979 she maintained his files and library, transferring them to the Scripps archives in 1980.

Shor wrote a history of Oceanids in 1982.

Her experience and knowledge of the history of Scripps was recognized.

As subsequent Scripps historian D. Day commented, "Betty was the walking memory of the institution."

With R. H. Rosenblatt and J. D. Isaacs, Shor co-wrote a biography of Hubbs for the National Academy of Sciences published in 1987.

Project Mohole aimed to obtain a sample of the Mohorovičić discontinuity (Moho) by drilling from a deep-ocean region.

Below continents the discontinuity is too deep to be reached by drilling, but below deep-ocean regions it is shallower.

Nevertheless, deep-ocean drilling had never before been successful, and the project would have to drill an additional 3–6 miles below the sea floor to reach the Moho.

The project was initially led by a group of scientists called the American Miscellaneous Society with funding from the National Science Foundation.

The group included Walter Munk and Roger Revelle at Scripps.