Hugo Benioff
Victor Hugo Benioff ( September 14, 1899 - February 29, 1968 ) was an American geophysicist and seismologist.
Hugo Benioff graduated from Pomona College in 1921 . First he embarked on the career of an astronomer and worked for a time at the Mount Wilson Observatory . However, the nighttime working hours did not appeal to him, so he switched to seismology . Since the early 1930s, Benioff also worked on the construction of electronic musical instruments such as cello, piano and violin. However, he gained his fame through science.
In 1924 he came to the Seismological Laboratory in Pasadena and in 1935 obtained his doctorate at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), into which the Seismological Laboratory was integrated a year later. At that time, other important seismologists were working at Caltech, such as Beno Gutenberg and Charles Francis Richter . Benioff proved to be an inventive designer of earthquake measuring devices ( seismometers ). One of his first devices is named after him, the Benioff seismometer . It was created in 1932. He also designed instruments for measuring the tension in the solid earth. Hugo Benioff became a professor at Caltech during his further career.
One of his best-known works was the mapping of deep earthquakes in the Pacific Ocean, which he published in 1954. He established a connection between the depth of the hypocenters of earthquakes and their distance from deep sea channels and recognized that the coherent pattern of ever deeper earthquakes represents the position of the subducting oceanic plate in the earth's mantle . This seismically active area of subduction has since been referred to in seismology as the Wadati-Benioff zone , after him and the Japanese seismologist Kiyoo Wadati .
Awards (selection)
- 1953 - Member of the National Academy of Sciences
- 1957 - Arthur L. Day Medal from the Geological Society of America
- 1958 - Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- 1965 - William Bowie Medal from the American Geophysical Union
- 1965 - Royal Astronomical Society Medal
Publications (selection)
- 1932 - A new vertical seismograph , Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, Vol. 22 , No. 2
- 1954 - Orogenesis and deep crustal structure - additional evidence from seismology , Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, Vol. 66 , pp. 385-400
Web links / sources
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Benioff, Hugo |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Benioff, Victor Hugo (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American seismologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1899 |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1968 |