Retired, Gulf Oil Company, Born in 1906 in Latvia, Morris Muskat earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Ohio State University before coming to Caltech for his PhD – one of the first engineers in oil production history to be a trained physicist. His research career with Gulf Oil began in 1929, and he applied basic classic physics to understanding the flow of oil and gas through porous rocks in which they were trapped. His book, Physical Principals of Oil Production (1949), was the standard text for students of advanced petroleum engineering for many years. He was also the author of over 100 technical papers and held 15 patents. He was a fellow of the AAAS and the American Physical Society, and a member of AIUME, American Petroleum Institute, the National Academy of Engineering, AGY, and the New York Academy of Science.