I've just been reading in the BBC magazine, "Focus", that Harry Hess (apart from having an impressive set of pipes), was the first scientist to propose the idea of "seafloor spreading", whereby convection within the mantle brings molten material to the surface at mid-ocean ridges, slowly pushing the continents apart.

Of course, this was years before the Harem Scarem debut, when he was Head of Geology at Princeton University in 1962.

:-)