Elizabeth Noble Shor

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. 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, 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. ==Career at Scripps==

When the Shors arrived at Scripps in 1953, the Scripps community was small and close knit. The Scripps population in 1952, including scientists, staff, and students, numbered 415 people and Roger Revelle was director. Shor joined the lively wives 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. After his death in 1979 she maintained his files and library, transferring them to the Scripps archives in 1980. 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. Indeed, he was able to suggest the first suitable drilling site near Guadalupe Island, Mexico. The project suffered from political and scientific opposition, mismanagement, and cost overruns. The U.S. House of Representatives defunded it in 1966. Shor developed a lengthy chronology of the debacle. In the process of collecting material for this book, she also established the archives for the entire Scripps institution. Scripps expeditions Throughout his career at Scripps, Shor's husband served as chief scientist on many research expeditions worldwide, beginning with geophysical expeditions to the Gulf of Alaska. He conducted the first expedition to the Indian Ocean by Scripps in 1960. From 1971 to 1992 Shor frequently accompanied him on expeditions; she was an active participant of the cruises. ==Honor==

Shor's contributions to Scripps and oceanography were honored when the Scripps Institution of Oceanography named a guyot, a flat topped seamount, after her. ==Personal life==

Shor was married to Scripps geophysicist George Shor for 59 years. They had a daughter and two sons. Shor and her husband developed an interest in bamboo, including its use as a structural material for flooring, furniture and other applications. They were active members of the American Bamboo Society for many years. Betty retired from Scripps in 1983, while maintaining her activity for the institution. George Shor died on July 3, 2009, age 86, at home in La Jolla, California, from complications following several strokes. Betty Shor died, age 83, on October 13, 2013, at her son's home in Honolulu, Hawaii. ==Books==

• Elizabeth Noble Shor, Fossils and Flies: The life of a compleat [sic] scientist Samuel Wendell Williston (1851-1918), University of Oklahoma Press (Norman, OK), 1971, 285 pp. • Elizabeth Noble Shor, The fossil feud between E. D. Cope and O. C. Marsh, Exposition Press, 1974, xii+340 pp. • Elizabeth Noble Shor, Dinner in the morning: A collection of breakfast and brunch recipes, Tofua Press (San Diego), 1977, 85 pp. • Elizabeth Noble Shor, Scripps Institution of Oceanography: Probing the Oceans, 1936-1976, Tofua Press (San Diego), 1978, 502 pp. • Marine Geophysics: A Navy Symposium, Elizabeth N. Shor and Carolyn L. Ebrahimi, eds., 1987, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Link , 20 pp. • Wolf H. Berger and E. N. Shor, Ocean: Reflections on a Century of Exploration, University of California Press (Berkeley and Los Angeles), 2009, 536 pp. ==References==