Geophysics and Seismology

Kelin Wang

Kelin Wang (王克林) is a Chinese Canadian research geophysicist at the Geological Survey of Canada's Pacific Geoscience Centre in British Columbia, known for subduction-zone earthquake and tsunami hazard research.

Kenneth Creer

Kenneth Creer (1925–2020) was a British geophysicist who pioneered palaeomagnetism, compiling the first apparent polar wander path in 1954, the first physical test of continental drift.

Kerry Sieh

Kerry Sieh is an American geophysicist known for proposing the buried Australasian impact crater in southern Laos and for founding the Earth Observatory of Singapore.

Leon Knopoff

Leon Knopoff (1925–2011) was an American geophysicist at UCLA for 60 years, known as the father of statistical seismology and for the spring-block model of earthquake faulting.

Lisa Tauxe

Lisa Tauxe is a geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography known for reconstructing the past intensity of Earth's magnetic field; she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2015.

Lloyd Berkner

Lloyd Berkner (1905–1967) was an American geophysicist and electrical engineer who built the first automatic ionospheric observatories and proposed the International Geophysical Year of 1957–1958.

Lloyd S. Cluff

Lloyd S. Cluff (died 2019) was an American earthquake geologist, elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1978, who led earthquake risk management at PG&E.

Louis B. Slichter

Louis B. Slichter was an American geophysicist at MIT and UCLA who pioneered the study of inverse problems, earth tides, and the earth's free oscillations.

Lynn Sykes

Lynn R. Sykes, born 1937, is an American seismologist and National Academy of Sciences member at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, known for confirming plate tectonics and nuclear test ban verification.

M. Nafi Toksöz

M. Nafi Toksöz is a Turkish-born geophysicist and MIT professor emeritus known for earthquake seismology, lunar seismology from the Apollo program, and founding MIT's Earth Resources Laboratory.

Marcia McNutt

Marcia McNutt is an American geophysicist and the first woman to direct the U.S. Geological Survey and to serve as president of the National Academy of Sciences.

Mark A. Richards

Mark A. Richards is an American geophysicist at UC Berkeley who studies mantle convection, hotspots, and flood basalts, and served as provost at the University of Washington.

Mark D. Zoback

Mark D. Zoback is an American geophysicist, emeritus professor at Stanford University, known for measuring crustal stress, fault strength, and reservoir geomechanics for energy development.

Martin Bott

Martin Bott (1926–2018) was an English geophysicist who spent his career at Durham University, interpreting gravity and magnetic anomalies and pioneering finite element modeling of lithospheric stress.

Mary Lou Zoback

Mary Lou Zoback is an American geophysicist and seismologist known for the World Stress Map, a 28-year USGS career, and election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1995.

Matthew J. Fouch

Matthew J. Fouch is an American geophysicist known for seismic imaging of the lithosphere and upper mantle, who received the 2006 PECASE award while at Arizona State University.

Max Wyss

Max Wyss is a seismologist, Caltech PhD of 1970 and Wadati Professor Emeritus at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, known for his 1981 multiple asperity model for earthquake prediction.

Michael Gurnis

Michael Gurnis is a geophysicist and Caltech's Smits Professor of Geophysics, known for showing that mantle convection and subduction drive dynamic topography and the flooding of continents.

Mikhail Sadovsky

Mikhail Alexandrovich Sadovsky (Михаил Александрович Садовский; 1904–1994) was a Soviet geophysicist who led physical measurements at the first Soviet atomic bomb test and derived the Sadovsky formulas.

Nicolas Luco

Nicolas (Nico) Luco is an American research civil engineer at the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colorado, specializing in probabilistic seismic hazard analysis and leading the National Seismic Hazard Model.

Norman Sleep

Norman Sleep, born 1945, is an American geophysicist and emeritus professor at Stanford University, elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1999, known for mantle convection and planetary thermal evolution.

Osmond Fisher

Osmond Fisher (1817–1914) was an English clergyman and geologist, rector of Harlton, who wrote the first geophysics textbook, The Physics of the Earth's Crust (1881), anticipating convection currents and continental mobility.

Paul G. Silver

Paul G. Silver, also known as Paul Silver, was an American geophysicist and seismologist at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., known for applying seismic observations to infer mantle flow.

Paul Tackley

Paul J. Tackley is a geophysicist and professor at ETH Zurich who numerically models mantle convection on Earth and other planets; he received the 2025 Arthur Holmes Medal.

Perry Byerly

Perry Byerly was an American seismologist at UC Berkeley who directed its seismographic stations for 38 years and joined the National Academy of Sciences in 1946.

Peter M. Shearer

Peter M. Shearer is an American seismologist and professor of geophysics at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, known for imaging Earth's mantle and the textbook Introduction to Seismology.

Sep 20, 2026

Peter Molnar

Peter Molnar (1943–2022) was an American geophysicist and professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, known for work on the tectonics of the Himalaya and Tibetan Plateau.

Richard Briggs

Richard William Briggs is a USGS research geologist in Golden, Colorado, known for reconstructing earthquake prehistories on major faults, mapping seafloor deformation with coral microatolls, and receiving a PECASE award.

Oct 15, 2026

Richard Dixon Oldham

Richard Dixon Oldham (1858–1936) was a British geologist who identified P, S, and surface waves and used earthquake travel times to demonstrate in 1906 that Earth has a central core.