Beno Gutenberg

Infobox Scientist
name = Beno Gutenberg
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caption = Beno Gutenberg
birth_date = June 4, 1889
birth_place = Darmstadt
death_date = January 25, 1960
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nationality = Germany
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field = seismology
work_institutions = California Institute of Technology
alma_mater = University of Göttingen
doctoral_advisor = Emil Wiechert
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Beno Gutenberg (June 4, 1889 – January 25, 1960) was a German-born seismologist who made several important contributions to the science. He was a colleague of Charles Francis Richter at the California Institute of Technology and Richter's collaborator in developing the Richter magnitude scale for measuring an earthquake's magnitude.

Gutenberg was born in Darmstadt, Germany and obtained his Doctorate in Physics from University of Göttingen in 1911. His advisor was Emil Wiechert. Gutenberg held positions at the University of Strasbourg which he lost when Strasbourg became French in 1918. After some years where he had to sustain himself with managing his father's soap factory, he obtained in 1926 a junior professorship at University of Frankfurt-am-Main, which was badly paid. Although he was already in the Twenties one of the leading seismologists worldwide, and definitely the leading seismologist in Germany, he was then still dependent on the position in his father's factory. In 1928 the attempt to become the successor of his academic teacher Emil Wiechert in Göttingen failed. There are hints that Gutenbergs Jewish background might have played a role, because already in the Twenties there were strong antisemitic tendencies in German universities (see the article by Leon Knopoff linked below). For similar reasons he was also not accepted for a professorship in Potsdam to become the successor of Gustav Angenheister.

Since Gutenberg did not have any chance to sustain himself solely from his scientific work in Germany, he accepted a position as Professor of Geophysics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena in 1930. Had he obtained a full professorship in Germany, he would have lost it in 1933 anyway, like so many other scientists of jewish ancestry, many of whom emigrated to the United States. Gutenberg, especially in his collaboration with Charles Francis Richter, made Caltech the leading seismological institute worldwide.

Collaborating with Richter, Gutenberg developed a relationship between seismic magnitude and energy, represented in the equation

:$!\; log\; E(s)\; =\; 11.8\; +\; 1.5\; M$.

This gives the energy $E(s)$ given from earthquakes from seismic waves in ergs. Another famous result known as Gutenberg-Richter law provides probability distribution of earthquakes for given energy.

He also worked on determining the depth of the core-mantle boundary as well as other properties of the interior of the earth.

Bibliography

*Citation
id = PMID:17756389
url= http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17756389
last=Gutenberg
first=
publication-date=1960 Apr 1
year=1960
title=Low-Velocity Layers in the Earth, Ocean, and Atmosphere.
volume=131
issue=3405
periodical=Science
pages=959-965
doi = 10.1126/science.131.3405.959
*Citation
id = PMID:17769434
url= http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17769434
last=Buwalda
first=
last2=Gutenberg
first2=
publication-date=1935 Apr 19
year=1935
title=INVESTIGATION OF OVERTHRUST FAULTS BY SEISMIC METHODS.
volume=81
issue=2103
periodical=Science
pages=384-386
doi = 10.1126/science.81.2103.384

External links

* [http://www.agu.org/inside/awards/gutenberg.html Biography at the American Geophysical Union website]
* [http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/biomems/bgutenberg.html Leon Knopoff on Gutenberg, National Academy of Science]