Which geophysicist predicted in 1956 that U.S. oil production would peak in 1970?

The geophysicist who predicted in 1956 that U.S. oil production would peak around 1970 was M. King Hubbert.

Hubbert presented his forecast in a 1956 paper to an American Petroleum Institute meeting in San Antonio, Texas. He argued that production from a finite resource tends to follow a bell-shaped curve: output rises as fields are developed, reaches a maximum, and then declines as the reserve is depleted.

His forecast placed the peak of total U.S. petroleum production between 1965 and 1970, with 1970 described as an upper-bound estimate. U.S. crude-oil production did reach a conventional peak in 1970, before later changes in technology, definitions and the development of newer production regions complicated the broader “peak oil” debate.

Hubbert’s name is therefore attached to the Hubbert curve and Hubbert peak. The prediction concerned production rates, not the moment when the United States would run out of oil. He also made important contributions to groundwater flow, petroleum geology and the study of underground fluids.