John Vidale

John Emilio Vidale (March 15, 1959 –) is an American-born seismologist who specializes in examining seismograms to explore features within the Earth. He received the American Geophysical Union's James B. Macelwane Medal in 1994.

Vidale was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, studied physics and geology at Yale, and obtained his Ph.D. from Caltech in 1987. He then held research positions at UC Santa Cruz and the USGS, until he joined UCLA in 1995. In 2006, he moved to Seattle to direct the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network at the University of Washington. He was a Gutenberg Fellow at Caltech and a Gilbert Fellow of the USGS. Vidale is a Fellow of AGU and received AGU's Macelwane Medal [cite web | url=http://www.ucsc.edu/news_events/press_releases/archive/93-94/04-94/042194-AGU_honors_seismolo.html | title=Macelwane medal | date=Apr 21, 1994 | accessdate=2007-04-11] .

He has studied the relation of Earth tides and earthquakes - finding only the strongest tides noticeably effect the timing of earthquakes [cite web | url=http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2004/10/65442 | title=Wired | date=May 25, 2004
accessdate=2007-04-11] , earthquake swarms - finding they are a more general phenomenon than he previously suspected [cite web | url=http://www.hindu.com/seta/2006/11/02/stories/2006110200261700.htm | title=India's national newspaper | date=November 2, 2006 | accessdate=2007-04-11] , the inner core - discovering high-frequency seismic waves scattered scattered therein that offer a second line of evidence it is rotating about 0.2 degrees per year [cite web | url=http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/25613;jsessionid=baa9... | title=American Scientist
date=Sept, 2002 | accessdate=2007-04-11] [cite web | url=http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2000/525/1 | title=Science Now | date=May 25, 2000 | accessdate=2007-04-11] , the stronger than expected healing of fault zones after an earthquake [cite web | url=http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/02/030203071747.htm | title=Science Daily Article | date=Feb 3, 2003 | accessdate=2007-04-11] , and various details of the seismic structure of the mantle [cite web | url=http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/02/980212072550.htm | title=Science Daily | date=Feb 12, 1998 | accessdate=2007-04-11] .

Vidale also contributed an improved method of ray tracing which relied on a finite-difference approximation of the eikonal equation and which has been used widely in both earthquake and reflection seismology. There have been some controversies surrounding his research, including endorsements of risky experiments [cite web | url=http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/stories/s820678.htm | title=The Science Show | date=May 4, 2003 | accessdate=2007-04-11] [cite web | url=http://www.kcet.org/lifeandtimes/archives/200405/20040503.php | title=KCET Life and Times | date=May 3, 2004 | accessdate=2007-04-11] [cite web | url=http://www.geotimes.org/mar04/NN_KielisBorok.html | title=Geotimes | date=March, 2004 | accessdate=2007-04-11] , misquotes [cite web | url=http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/05/30/29514.html| title=Pravda | date=May 30, 2002 | accessdate=2007-04-11] , and mild ridicule [cite web | url=http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF11/1129.html | title=It lurks under Barrow |date=April 14, 1993 | accessdate=2007-04-11] as well.

External links

* [http://earthweb.ess.washington.edu/vidale/ UW web page, including links to PDFs of 80 or so reviewed papers]
* [http://www.ess.ucla.edu/faculty/vidale/index.asp UCLA web page]

References