Nafi Toksoz

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Mehmet Nafi Toksöz (born April 18, 1934 in Antakya ) is a Turkish-American geophysicist .

Toksöz came to the United States on a geophysics scholarship in 1954 after originally planning to become a civil engineer. He studied at the Colorado School of Mines (graduation in 1958) and at Caltech with a master's degree in 1960 and a doctorate in geophysics and as an electrical engineer in 1963. He then carried out research at Caltech and became an assistant professor in 1965 and from 1971 professor of geophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he was director of the George Wallace Jr. Geophysical Observatory. At MIT he trained numerous geophysicists.

He used seismic tomography to research, for example, subduction processes in plate tectonics early on . In the 1960s he was involved in the evaluation of moonquakes for the internal structure of the moon as part of the Apollo program . He was the founder of the Earth Resources Laboratory at MIT in response to the oil crisis in the 1970s, and in this context applied seismology to oil and gas exploration. He also looked at the application of seismology to the detection of nuclear tests and the dangers and ways of predicting earthquakes. A focus of his interests is the eastern Mediterranean, including his home country Turkey, and the plate tectonic processes (collision of the Arab and Eurasian plates) and seismic activities, as well as Central Asia.

In 2007 he received the Harry Fielding Reid Medal from the Seismological Society of America.

He is married to the Latin teacher Charlotte Johnson and has two stepdaughters.

Fonts

  • The subduction of the lithosphere , Scientific American November 1975
  • with John W. Minear, Bruce R. Julian Temperature field and geophysical effects of a downgoing slab , J. of Geophys. Research, Volume 76, 1971, Issue 5
  • with Norman H. Sleep, Albert T. Smith Evolution of the downgoing lithosphere and mechanisms of deep focus earthquakes , Geophys. J. of the Royal Astron. Soc., December 1973

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life and career data according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004.
  2. ^ Reid Medal to Toksöz
personal data
SURNAME Toksöz, Nafi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Turkish-American geophysicist
DATE OF BIRTH April 18, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Antakya