Mary Sears was born on this day in history in Massachusetts, eventually becoming a Commander in the United States Naval Reserve and an oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).
She attended Radcliffe College, from which she received a bachelor’s degree in 1927, a master’s degree in 1929, and a Ph.D. in zoology in 1933.
Oceanographer and WAVES Lt. Mary Sears. Photo courtesy Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
While a graduate student she worked at Harvard University with Henry Bigelow, a founder and the first Director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. She started working as summers in 1932 as a planktonologist, one of the first ten research assistants to be appointed to the staff at the Institution, and was appointed to a year-round position as planktonologist in 1940.
In 1943, Sears was commissioned a Lieutenant Junior Grade in the WAVES, a women’s unit of the Navy, and called to Washington, D.C., where she organized and headed the new Oceanographic Unit of the Navy Hydrographic Office. Her division prepared oceanographic reports for planning of events in the Pacific, including charts that were drawn on handkerchiefs that were navigation aids carried by soldiers.
Mary Sears in a 1960 photo
As a Smithsonian Magazine article on Sears observes, “oceanographic intelligence was especially crucial for the Pacific campaign. Amphibious operations were an orchestra of moving parts, each essential to the execution of the whole—and each presenting an opportunity for catastrophe. Even with the best planning, the missions faced inevitable hazards: hostile fire, reefs, swirling currents, rough surf zones and underwater obstacles.”
By 1944, the Joint Chiefs of Staff expanded Sears’ responsibility to include management of over 400 personnel, 100 more than typical for a naval destroyer. Her unit was charged with aiding the Navy in strategic maneuvers through providing analysis of tides, surf heights, and other oceanic metrics to give the Navy a strategic advantage.
Smithsonian Magazine writes:
Her long-neglected story, virtually forgotten today, illustrates how the nascent field of oceanography came of age and refocused its efforts on the war, and how fledgling amphibious forces grew into premier assault teams. It’s no exaggeration to say that Sears—gathering data, making top-secret calculations on the eve of battle, leading her team of scientists and analysts, including the group she called the ‘enlisted girls’—helped the United States and its allies achieve victory in the Pacific.”
Sears (center,middle row) in 1950 with Woods Hole colleagues, including Henry Bryant Bigelow (center, first row, hat on lap) and Columbus Iselin (first row, third from left). © Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
In 1947 she returned to Woods Hole, transferring to the Naval Volunteer Reserves where she was the only woman in the Woods Hole unit and was elected officer in charge of the unit in 1950. She retired as a Commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve in 1963.
Two decades after the war, WHOI director Columbus O’Donnell Iselin wrote of Sears: “She has done as much for the advancement of oceanography as anyone I know.” Roger Revelle, a co-worker during WWII and former Director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and founder of the University of California at San Diego, said in 1980 that “because the Federal Government has very little memory, it is generally forgotten that the first Oceanographer of the Navy in modern times was a short, rather shy and prim WAVE Lieutenant . . . . they underestimated the powerful natural force that is Mary Sears.”
After retiring in 1970, Sears stayed in the village of Woods Hole. She died at 92 in 1997.
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