Oil Exploration and Drilling Pioneers

People who found and drilled the first great oil wells and who founded the science of looking for oil. The group includes the first American to drill successfully for oil, the explorer who organized the Spindletop gusher that began the petroleum age in Texas, and the geophysicist who brought geophysical methods to the search for oil. A person belongs here when the cited article credits the person with a first successful oil well, a famous gusher or applied geophysics for petroleum. It excludes refiners and company executives with no exploration role.