Los Alamos National Laboratory is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the American southwest. Best known for its central role in helping develop the first atomic bomb, LANL is one of the world's largest and most advanced scientific institutions.
Geophysics is a subject of natural science concerned with the physical processes and physical properties of the Earth and its surrounding space environment, and the use of quantitative methods for their analysis. Geophysicists, who usually study geophysics, physics, or one of the Earth sciences at the graduate level, complete investigations across a wide range of scientific disciplines. The term geophysics classically refers to solid earth applications: Earth's shape; its gravitational, magnetic fields, and electromagnetic fields ; its internal structure and composition; its dynamics and their surface expression in plate tectonics, the generation of magmas, volcanism and rock formation. However, modern geophysics organizations and pure scientists use a broader definition that includes the water cycle including snow and ice; fluid dynamics of the oceans and the atmosphere; electricity and magnetism in the ionosphere and magnetosphere and solar-terrestrial physics; and analogous problems associated with the Moon and other planets.
The New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, formerly New Mexico School of Mines, is a public university in Socorro, New Mexico, United States.
William Maurice "Doc" Ewing was an American geophysicist and oceanographer.
Frank Press was an American geophysicist. He was an advisor to four U.S. presidents, and later served two consecutive terms as president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (1981–1993). He was the author of 160 scientific papers and co-author of the textbooks Earth and Understanding Earth.
Siegfried S. Hecker is an American metallurgist and nuclear scientist. He served as Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1986 to 1997 and is now affiliated with Stanford University, where he is research professor emeritus in the Department of Management Science and Engineering in the School of Engineering, and senior fellow emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. During this time, he was also elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering (1988) for outstanding research on plutonium and the forming of materials, and for leadership in developing energy and weapons systems.
Linton Forrestall Brooks is an American government official who served as the Under Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Security from 2002 to 2007.
Paul G. Richards is an English-born, American seismologist who has made fundamental contributions to the theory of seismic wave propagation and in methods to understand how the recorded shapes of seismic waves are affected by processes of diffraction, attenuation and scattering. He is the Mellon Professor of the Natural Sciences at Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University.
Charles F. McMillan was an American nuclear physicist and served as the 10th director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. His appointment was effective June 1, 2011. He succeeded Michael R. Anastasio. On September 5, 2017, McMillan announced he would be leaving the director position at the end of the year.
The École et Observatoire des Sciences de la Terre is a French institution under the supervisory authority of the University of Strasbourg and the CNRS-INSU in charge of education, research, observation in Earth Science and its diffusion. Situated in two buildings located on the central campus of the University of Strasbourg, EOST consists of more than 150 permanent employees among its staff.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to geophysics:
Harry Oscar Wood (1879–1958) was an American seismologist who made several significant contributions in the field of seismology in the early twentieth-century. Following the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, California, Wood expanded his background of geology and mineralogy and his career took a change of direction into the field of seismology. In the 1920s he co-developed the torsion seismometer, a device tuned to detect short-period seismic waves that are associated with local earthquakes. In 1931 Wood, along with another seismologist, redeveloped and updated the Mercalli intensity scale, a seismic intensity scale that is still in use as a primary means of rating an earthquake's effects.
Jeannette O. Wallace was an American politician who was a Republican member of the New Mexico House of Representatives from 1991 until her death. She was an alumnus of Arizona State University and worked in public relations.
Robert E. Sheriff was an American geophysicist best known for writing the comprehensive geophysical reference, Encyclopedic Dictionary of Exploration Geophysics. His main research interests included the seismic detailing of reservoirs, in 3-D seismic interpretation and seismic stratigraphy, and practical applications of geophysical methods. Hua-Wei Zhou, Department Chair of the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, said about Sheriff: “…a giant figure in the world of exploration geophysics… When I think about Bob, a number of key words pop up in my mind: kindness, honesty, hardworking, seeking perfection, generosity and wisdom.”
James Huntington Coon physicist at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, made significant contributions to the science and study of neutron interactions. He worked on the Vera satellite project.
Hrvoje Tkalčić is an Australian and Croatian scientist (geophysicist) and Professor E2 at the Australian National University in Canberra.
Thomas Mason is a Canadian-American condensed-matter physicist who serves as the director of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Prior to this appointment, he had been an executive at Battelle Memorial Institute from 2017 to 2018, and the director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory from 2007 to 2017. Mason moved to Oak Ridge in 1998 at the start of construction of the Spallation Neutron Source which he led from 2001 until project completion in 2006.
Nerses "Krik" Krikorian was an Armenian-American chemist and intelligence officer at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is best known for his work on high-temperature chemistry. An Armenian genocide survivor, he arrived in the U.S. at 4 and studied at Niagara University. He was involved in the Manhattan Project and by the time of his death was one of the last living scientists involved in it.
