László Egyed (12 February 1914 – 11 July 1970) was a Hungarian

geophysicist 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. The term ''geophysics'' som ...

who published over 100 scientific articles. In 1956 he wrote the book ''Physics of the solid earth'', which was reworked and republished in 1969. Like

Ott Christoph Hilgenberg Ott, OTT or O.T.T. may refer to: Entertainment * OTT (group), a pop band from the late 1990s * Ott (record producer), British record producer and musician * "O.T.T" (song), a song by Fugative * ''O.T.T.'' (television series), a UK TV programme f ...

, Samuel Warren Carey and Pascual Jordan, Egyed was a supporter of the

expanding Earth theory The expanding Earth or growing Earth hypothesis argues that the position and relative movement of continents is at least partially due to the volume of Earth increasing. Conversely, geophysical global cooling was the hypothesis that various featu ...

, an alternative to plate tectonics. He calculated an increase of the Earth's radius by approximately 1 millimeter per year, or a total of 500 kilometers since the

Cambrian The Cambrian Period ( ; sometimes symbolized C with bar, Ꞓ) was the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and of the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 53.4 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran Period 538.8 million ...

period. On phenomenological grounds Egyed proposed a possible decrease of the

gravitational constant The gravitational constant (also known as the universal gravitational constant, the Newtonian constant of gravitation, or the Cavendish gravitational constant), denoted by the capital letter , is an empirical physical constant involved in ...

in connection with phase transitions within the Earth. Although Egyed's hypotheses of phase transitions were confirmed, standard theoretical explanations today do not attribute this phenomenon to any expansion of the Earth. The Association of Hungarian Geophysicists has honored Egyed by awarding the László Egyed medal every two years since 1986 "to recognize outstanding professional performance in the field of geophysics."By-laws of László Egyed medal
(section 4), Association of Hungarian Geophysicists

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Egyed, Laszlo 1914 births 1970 deaths Hungarian geologists Members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences 20th-century geologists