Hans-Rudolf Wenk

Hans-Rudolf Wenk (born October 25, 1941 in Zurich ) is a Swiss mineralogist and geophysicist.

life and work

Wenk, the son of Eduard Wenk , studied geology and related subjects in Basel and the University of Zurich, where he received his doctorate in crystallography in 1965. As a post-doctoral student he was at the University of California, Los Angeles with David T. Griggs in 1966/67 and was then on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley , where he became a professor.

He is known for texture analysis of minerals in rocks under the electron microscope. He clarified the causes for the different propagation speeds of seismic waves in the earth's core and mantle, which result from the orientation of the minerals (their texture) and are the result of recrystallization processes. As a result, seismic waves in the iron of the earth's core are faster parallel to the poles than perpendicular to the polar axis (for which Wenk carried out high-pressure experiments). Recrystallizations are also based on the plasticity of the mantle (convection currents in the upper mantle), also with an effect on the seismic velocities: they are ten percent faster perpendicular to the mid-ocean ridges than parallel to it, which is also used to image the processes in the upper mantle ( Teleseismic Imaging). He uses different electron microscopic methods, neutron diffraction and synchrotron radiation as X-ray sources and developed extensive computer programs (BEARTEX) for the analysis.

He received the Humboldt Research Award and was visiting scholar in Frankfurt, Hamburg, Kiel, Lyon, Metz, Perugia, Hiroshima and Nanjing University. In 2010 he received the Abraham Gottlob Werner Medal in silver.

He is a passionate mountaineer.

Fonts

• Editor: Electron Microscopy in Mineralogy, Springer 1979
• with U. Fred Cocks, Carlos Roberto Tomé: Texture and Anisotropy. Preferred Orientation in Polycrystals and their Effect on Material Properties, Cambridge University Press 1998
• Editor: Preferred orientation in deformed metals and rocks: an introduction to modern texture analysis, Academic Press 1985
• with Andrei Bulakh: Minerals. Their constitution and origin, Cambridge UP 2004

literature

• Alexander E. Gates: Earth Scientists from A to Z, Facts on File, 2003

Web links

• Homepage in Berkeley