English marine geophysicist

Drummond "Drum" Matthews had a long, outstanding career in geology and geophysics, contributing to the fundamental understanding of the structure and evolution of the earth's crust.

Matthews grew up near the sea, at Porlock in Somerset, England, and developed a lifelong love of the ocean. He attended Bryanston School in Dorset, before a term in the Royal Navy. He then studied at King's College, Cambridge, specializing in geology and petrology. After graduation, Matthews spent two years (1955–57) in the Falkland Islands, as part of the Dependencies Survey (later the British Antarctic Survey), before returning to Cambridge to complete a Ph.D. in marine geophysics.

In 1962, as part of the International Indian Ocean Expedition, Matthews made a small but detailed survey of a ridge in the north-west Indian Ocean that showed large areas of the seafloor magnetized in opposite polarities. This was to...