Walter Zürn (born August 21, 1937) is a German

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate caus ...

and

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 ...

. His field of interest is tides and seismic vibrations. The Zurn Peak (1515m) in Antarctica is named for him.

Education

Zurn studied physics in

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. He wrote his thesis at the "Institute of Metal Physics".

Career

After graduation, he spent four years at the "University of California" (UCLA).

Antarctic research

From 1971 to 1972, Zurn was Science Manager at the

Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station The Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station is the United States scientific research station at the South Pole of the Earth. It is the southernmost point under the jurisdiction (not sovereignty) of the United States. The station is located on the ...

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest contine ...

. He said of the station, :"This spot at the bottom of the world is a good observation post for numerous reasons including altitude, high magnetic latitude, remoteness from human interference and the ocean."

Research in Germany

Walter Zürn returned to Germany in 1974. He worked in the newly founded

German Geophysical Society The German Geophysical Society (german: Deutsche Geophysikalische Gesellschaft, DGG) is a society for geophysics in Germany; it was founded on 19 Sep 1922 in Leipzig, Germany on the initiative of the seismologist Emil Wiechert, as the Deutsche Seism ...

at the Universities of

and

Karlsruhe Karlsruhe ( , , ; South Franconian: ''Kallsruh'') is the third-largest city of the German state (''Land'') of Baden-Württemberg after its capital of Stuttgart and Mannheim, and the 22nd-largest city in the nation, with 308,436 inhabitants. ...

. In the 1980s, he worked with Gerhard Müller on experiments on

Newton's law of universal gravitation Newton's law of universal gravitation is usually stated as that every particle attracts every other particle in the universe with a force that is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distanc ...

. In 2004, the first Rebeur-Paschwitz Prize of the German Geophysical Society was awarded to Zürn for his outstanding scientific achievements in the field of geophysics.Laudatio zur Verleihung des Rebeur-Paschwitz-Preises
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Honors

*Antarctic Medal of Merit of the United States (1976) *Rebeur-Pashtun Prize of German Geophysical Society (2004)

Publications

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zurn, Walter 1937 births Living people German geophysicists Seismologists