Marston C. and Peter Sargent Papers, 1845-1985 (bulk 1932-1975) (SMC 25)

Marston C. Sargent (1906-1986) was an oceanographer and inventor affiliated with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) at UC San Diego for more than four decades. Sargent was born in Somerville, MA, and graduated from Harvard in 1929 with a degree in biology. He earned his doctoral degree in plant physiology and biophysics in 1934 at California Institute of Technology (marrying Grace "Peter" Tompkins on April 8, 1933) and worked for there for three years as an assistant biologist. Sargent moved to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography as an assistant biochemist and later became an instructor of oceanography from 1937-1942. He was called to active duty in the U.S. Navy from 1942 to 1946, during which time he was assigned to the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations and the Navy's Bureau of Ships. He eventually rose to the rank of lieutenant commander in the Naval Reserve. After the war, Sargent returned to SIO where he held the position of assistant professor until 1951. From 1951 to 1955, Sargent was an oceanographer and head of training at the U.S. Navy Electronics Laboratory. In 1955, he moved to the Office of Naval Research (ONR) in Pasadena where he worked and remained until 1970 (serving a two-year stint in London). After leaving ONR, Sargent was the coordinator of the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations until 1974.

Sargent was a co-inventor of an electric device called the Bathythermograph Data Reduction System, which enabled digitization of records compiled with the mechanical bathythermograph, an instrument for logging underwater temperatures. This device allowed researchers to quickly record large quantities of data on ocean conditions. He also became an authority on photosynthesis and the growth requirements of marine plankton algae. Sargent retired in 1974, but he continued as a research associate with the Marine Life Research Group at SIO until 1980.

Grace "Peter" Tompkins Sargent (1909-1992), daughter of Florence and Harry Tompkins, was born in the Sierras of California. Her father, Harry, was one of the first rangers in the new U.S. Forest Service under Gifford Pinchot. She was known by her childhood nickname, Peter, her whole adult life. Peter attended grade school in Pasadena with Roger Revelle. In 1931 she graduated from Stanford with a degree in English, where she was also a member of the Zoology Club; she went on to earn her masters in zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1932. She met her husband Marston in Pasadena, where she was working as a Girl Scout nature counselor and secretary. She accompanied him to Scripps and his other assignments with the Navy in California. In 1979, Peter wrote and privately published a short, informal history of her recollections of the early years living and working at Scripps, The Sea Acorn, and she was the author of other works drawing on her experience in the Sierras and her father's experience in the Forest Service. She was an active member of the League of Women Voters and participated in the campaign for open space in the city of San Diego.

This EAD finding aid for the Sargent Papers utilizes re-purposed description and a container list from an inventory created in 1996 by archival processor Jeffrey A. Stoffel. The collection was not re-appraised, reorganized or re-labelled when the format of the finding aid was updated; therefore, it may be considered minimally processed.