John Clarence Karcher, Ph.D.

John Clarence Karcher is credited with developing new instrumentation and interpretation techniques that made reflection seismology a practical and economical exploration tool. Working for Geophysical Research Corporation, he successfully found and mapped salt domes on the Gulf Coast. This led to the first offshore use of seismic by Louisiana Land & Exploration Co. in 1928.

In 1933, Karcher and Everett DeGoyler were the first to map the deepseated Old Ocean dome in Texas, one of the largest discoveries of oil and gas condensate ever made on the U. S. Gulf Coast.