Václav Jan Láska (1862–1943) was a

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus *Czech (surnam ...

surveyor Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art, and science of determining the terrestrial two-dimensional or three-dimensional positions of points and the distances and angles between them. These points are usually on the ...

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. Astronomers observe astronomical objects, such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, galax ...

geophysicist Geophysics () is a subject of natural science concerned with the physical processes and properties of Earth and its surrounding space environment, and the use of quantitative methods for their analysis. Geophysicists conduct investigations acros ...

, and

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

. He was based mainly at

Charles University Charles University (CUNI; , UK; ; ), or historically as the University of Prague (), is the largest university in the Czech Republic. It is one of the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, oldest universities in the world in conti ...

, and was the founding director (1920-1933) of the State Institute of Geophysics, which later became the Institute of Geophysics of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

Láska's empirical rule

This empirical rule is one way how to approximate the distance from an earthquake's epicenter. The rule is most fitting for distance in the range of 2 − 10 Mm (thousand km). ''The epicentral distance in thousands of km is roughly equal to the difference between arrival times of S and P waves in minutes minus 1.'' Delta-Laska-english

External links

Charles University, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Department of Geophysics
(in Czech)

1862 births 1943 deaths Czech mathematicians Mathematicians from Austria-Hungary Astronomers from Austria-Hungary Czechoslovak mathematicians {{CzechRepublic-scientist-stub