Donald Josiah Palmer Swift, born 1935 in Dobbs Ferry, New York, is a geologist and educator.  Attending schools in the eastern United States and Sweden, he obtained his B.A. at Dartmouth, M.A. at Johns Hopkins, and Ph.D. at University of North Carolina.  He spent ten years a scientist with NOAA and four years as a geologist for ARCO.  He has taught at Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia; Duke University, North Carolina; and Old Dominion University, Virginia where he is a Professor of Oceanography.  He lives in Norfolk, Virginia and maintained a summer home, The Lookout, in Bay Point, Georgetown, Maine from 1997-2010.

He was married to Sondra Ford (known as Sandy) in 1961 at Washington, D.C.  Sandy died in 2006. 

Donald Josiah Palmer Swift and Sondra Ford had the following children:

Colin Butler Carroll