John Emilio Vidale (Papanice (KR) Italia born March 15, 1959) is an American-born

seismologist Seismology (; from Ancient Greek σεισμός (''seismós'') meaning "earthquake" and -λογία (''-logía'') meaning "study of") is the scientific study of earthquakes and the propagation of elastic waves through the Earth or through other ...

who specializes in examining seismograms to explore features within the Earth. He received the

American Geophysical Union The American Geophysical Union (AGU) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization of Earth, atmospheric, ocean, hydrologic, space, and planetary scientists and enthusiasts that according to their website includes 130,000 people (not members). AGU's act ...

James B. Macelwane Medal The James B. Macelwane Medal is awarded annually by the American Geophysical Union to three to five early career scientists (no more than 10 years beyond having received their Ph.D.). It is named after James B. Macelwane, a Jesuit priest and one of ...

in 1994. Vidale was born in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

, USA, studied physics and geology and obtained his Ph.D. from

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

in 1987. He then held research positions at

UC Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge of ...

and the

USGS The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, a ...

, until he joined

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

in 1995. In 2006, he moved to

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

to direct the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...

. In 2014, he became a project leader for the UW's M9 project, launched with the goal of preparing the region for the anticipated

Cascadia subduction zone The Cascadia subduction zone is a convergent plate boundary that stretches from northern Vancouver Island in Canada to Northern California in the United States. It is a very long, sloping subduction zone where the Explorer, Juan de Fuca, and ...

earthquake. He was a Gutenberg Fellow at Caltech and a Gilbert Fellow of the

. Vidale is a Fellow of AGU and received AGU's Macelwane Medal. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He studied the relation of Earth tides and earthquakes - finding only the strongest tides noticeably effect the timing of earthquakes, earthquake swarms - finding they are a more general phenomenon than he previously suspected, the inner core - discovering high-frequency seismic waves scattered therein that offer a second line of evidence it is rotating about 0.2 degrees per year, the stronger than expected healing of fault zones after an earthquake, and various details of the seismic structure of the mantle. 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.

References

External links

UW web page, including links to PDFs of 80 or so reviewed papersUCLA web page
1959 births Living people Scientists from Philadelphia American geophysicists American seismologists California Institute of Technology fellows {{geoscience-bio-stub