Karl Bernhard Zoeppritz

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Karl Zoeppritz

Karl Bernhard Zoeppritz (born October 22, 1881 in Mergelstetten , † July 20, 1908 in Göttingen ) was a German geoscientist and seismologist .

family

The geoscientist was the son of the factory owner Otto Stefan Friedrich Zoeppritz (1853-1922) and his wife Anna Maria Wilhelmina (1851-1925). His grandfather was the politician and entrepreneur Karl Zöppritz (1812–1900). Zoeppritz was the nephew of the geographer and physicist Karl Zöppritz (1838–1885).

Karl Zoeppritz was married to Elisabeth Ganz (1886–1964) from 1907. The couple had a daughter.

Life

Karl Zoeppritz studied geology and other scientific disciplines in Munich and Freiburg. Here he received his doctorate in 1905 with a purely geological topic. A year later he passed the senior teacher examination in Karlsruhe. During his studies he became interested in physics and especially in geophysics , a branch of research that was only just beginning to develop at the end of the 19th century and at that time was only taught by Emil Wiechert in Göttingen.

Zoeppritz managed to get an assistant position under Wiechert and moved to Göttingen. There he dealt with the records of major earthquakes of the time, including the famous San Francisco earthquake of 1906 . On the basis of the theoretical work of Wiechert, he created time- of-flight curves, both of which were published jointly in 1907, and which should serve to better identify various seismogram deployments from long-range earthquakes in the future .

Karl Bernhard Zoeppritz died in 1908 at the age of 26 from an infectious disease that he had contracted the previous winter. Much of his research had not yet been published. In addition to Wiechert, this was done by the Göttingen colleagues Ludwig Geiger and Beno Gutenberg . The outstanding foresight and comprehension of the young Karl Zoeppritz was decisive for the German Geophysical Society (DGG) to name the Karl Zoeppritz Prize, which was awarded for the first time in 2003 and which is to be awarded to young scientists for special achievements in geophysics.

Act

A significant advance in the interpretation of seismic wave phases was the observation of (multiple) reflections on the earth's surface and converted wave trains. Zoeppritz worked intensively on the amplitude behavior of seismic waves at interfaces depending on the angle of incidence and developed the Zoeppritz equations named after him for the calculation of the amplitudes. In his last research, Zoeppritz derived the reflection and transmission coefficients for reflected and refracted seismic waves.

Publications

  • Geological investigations in the Upper Engadine between Albula Pass and Livigno. Inaugural dissertation, University of Freiburg, 68pp, 1906.
  • About earthquake waves II. Time curves . News from the Royal Society of Sciences in Göttingen. Mathematical-Physical Class, 529-549, 1907.
  • with Geiger, Ludwig: About earthquake waves III. Calculation of path and speed of the precursors. Poisson's constant in the interior of the earth. News from the Royal Society of Sciences in Göttingen. Mathematical-Physical Class, 400–428, 1909.
  • with Geiger, Ludwig and Gutenberg, Beno: About earthquake waves V. Constitution of the interior of the earth, deduced from the soil displacement behavior of the once reflected to the direct longitudinal earthquake waves, and some other observations about earthquake waves. News from the Royal Society of Sciences in Göttingen. Mathematical-Physical Class, 121–206, 1912.
  • Earthquake waves VII. About reflection and passage of seismic waves through discontinuity surfaces. News from the Royal Society, 1919.

literature

  • Joachim RR Ritter, Andreas Barth, Johannes Schweitzer: Karl Bernhard Zoeppritz (1881–1908) . In: DGG Mitteilungen . No. 1, 2009, ISSN  0934-6554 (?!?!) , Pp. 18-26. ( Article , PDF file)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Joarchim RR Ritter, Andreas Barth, Johannes Schweitzer: Karl Bernhard Zoeppritz (1881-1908) . In: DGG Mitteilungen . No. 1, 2009, ISSN  0934–6554 (?!?!) , P. 18. ( Article ( Memento of the original dated November 12, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check Original and archive link according to instructions and then remove this note. , PDF file) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dgg-online.de
  2. ↑ Joarchim RR Ritter, Andreas Barth, Johannes Schweitzer: Karl Bernhard Zoeppritz (1881-1908) . In: DGG Mitteilungen . No. 1, 2009, ISSN  0934–6554 (?!?!) , P. 19. ( Article , PDF file)
personal data
SURNAME Zoeppritz, Karl Bernhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German geophysicist and seismologist
DATE OF BIRTH October 22, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Mergelstetten
DATE OF DEATH July 20, 1908
Place of death Goettingen