The Dutch geodesist and geophysicist Felix Andries Vening Meinesz (1887-1966) pioneered in the field of gravity measurements.

On July 30, 1887, F. A. Vening Meinesz was born in Scheveningen. He attended the public schools in Amsterdam, the city in which his father was the burgemeester, and in 1910 obtained his diploma in civil engineering from the Technical University in Delft. He was first employed with the Geodetic Commission of the Netherlands, his task being to continue the gravimetric survey of the country with the aid of the contemporary pendulum instruments. The unstable soil of the Netherlands proved a serious handicap, and it was impossible to attain the desired accuracy. Vening Meinesz tried to eliminate the disturbing movements of the soil by using two pendulums swinging from the same support. His experiments, combined with a mathematical analysis of the sway of the entire system, proved very successful. Further experiments, carried out aboard...