Thomas C. Hanks is an American

seismologist Seismology (; from Ancient Greek σεισμός (''seismós'') meaning "earthquake" and -λογία (''-logía'') meaning "study of") is the scientific study of earthquakes (or generally, quakes) and the generation and propagation of elastic ...

. He works for the

US Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), founded as the Geological Survey, is an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior whose work spans the disciplines of biology, geography, geology, and hydrology. The agency was founded on March ...

(USGS) in

Menlo Park, California Menlo Park ( ) is a city at the eastern edge of San Mateo County, California, San Mateo County in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. It is bordered by San Francisco Bay on the north and east; East Palo Alto, California, Eas ...

. Dr. Hanks is a member of the

Seismological Society of America The Seismological Society of America (SSA) is an international Learned society, scientific society devoted to the advancement of seismology and the understanding of earthquakes for the benefit of society. Founded in 1906, the society has members ...

, the

American Geophysical Union The American Geophysical Union (AGU) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization of Earth, Atmospheric science, atmospheric, Oceanography, ocean, Hydrology, hydrologic, Astronomy, space, and Planetary science, planetary scientists and enthusiasts that ...

, the

Earthquake Engineering Research Institute The Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) is a leading technical society in dissemination of earthquake risk and earthquake engineering research both in the U.S. and globally. EERI members include researchers, geologists, geotechnical ...

, the

Geological Society of America The Geological Society of America (GSA) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of the geosciences. History The society was founded in Ithaca, New York, in 1888 by Alexander Winchell, John J. Stevenson, Charles H. Hi ...

, the Peninsula Geological Society at Stanford, and many related geological societies. Dr. Hanks has authored dozens of scholarly papers in strong-motion seismology and tectonic

geomorphology Geomorphology () is the scientific study of the origin and evolution of topographic and bathymetric features generated by physical, chemical or biological processes operating at or near Earth's surface. Geomorphologists seek to understand wh ...

. In 1979 the Japanese-American seismologist

Hiroo Kanamori is a Japanese seismologist who has made fundamental contributions to understanding the physics of earthquakes and the tectonic processes that cause them. Career Kanamori and American seismologist Thomas C. Hanks developed the moment magnitud ...

, professor of seismology at the

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small group of institutes ...

and Dr. Hanks suggested the use of

moment magnitude scale The moment magnitude scale (MMS; denoted explicitly with or Mwg, and generally implied with use of a single M for magnitude) is a measure of an earthquake's magnitude ("size" or strength) based on its seismic moment. was defined in a 1979 paper ...

to replace the

Richter magnitude scale The Richter scale (), also called the Richter magnitude scale, Richter's magnitude scale, and the Gutenberg–Richter scale, is a measure of the strength of earthquakes, developed by Charles Richter in collaboration with Beno Gutenberg, and pr ...

for measuring the relative strength of earthquakes. The reason was that the Richter scale saturates at magnitudes greater than about 5.5, while the Moment magnitude scale does not saturate. Hanks graduated with a B.S.E. in geological engineering from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

in 1966 after completing a senior thesis titled "The meaning of a

heat flow Heat transfer is a discipline of thermal engineering that concerns the generation, use, conversion, and exchange of thermal energy (heat) between physical systems. Heat transfer is classified into various mechanisms, such as thermal conduction, ...

experiment on

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. It is also known as the "Red Planet", because of its orange-red appearance. Mars is a desert-like rocky planet with a tenuous carbon dioxide () atmosphere. At the average surface level the atmosph ...

." He later received his PhD from the California Institute of Technology in 1972 after completing a dissertation titled "A Contribution to the Determination and Interpretation of Seismic Source Parameters".

References

External links

"Quake Watcher" Princeton Alumni News profile on Hanks
American seismologists Fellows of the Seismological Society of America Princeton University School of Engineering and Applied Science alumni Year of birth missing (living people) Living people California Institute of Technology alumni {{US-geologist-stub

References

Further reading

External links