Prize Recipient

Paul G. Richards
Columbia University

Citation:

"For work applying his expertise in geophysics to seismic detection of nuclear explosions. His developments in "forensic seismology" are at the heart of the verification required for a test ban"

Background:

Born in Gloucestershire, England
1965  B.A. (Mathematics), University of Cambridge
1966  M.S. (Geology), California Institute of Technology
1970  Ph.D. (Geophysics), California Institute of Technology
1971  present teaching at Columbia University
1981  1986 Five-year MacArthur Fellowship
1984  1985 also 1993  1994: two periods of leave from Columbia University, as visiting scholar at the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, working on nuclear test ban verification
1987  present Mellon Professor of Natural Sciences, Columbia University
1992  1994 President of the Seismology Section, American Geophysical Union

Member of several review panels for U.S. Air Force, and NAS/NRC committees

Member of: American Geophysical Union, Arms Control Association, Council on Foreign Relations, Royal Astronomical Society, Seismological Society of America, Society of Exploration Geophysicists

Subset of more than 100 total publications:
Keiiti Aki & Paul G. Richards, Quantitative Seismology first edition W. H. Freeman and Company, 1980; second edition University Science Books, 2002 (also, editions in Russian, Chinese, Japanese).

Song, Xiaodong, and Paul G. Richards, Seismological evidence for differential rotation of the Earth's inner core, NATURE, 382, 221224, July 18 1996.

Richards, Paul G., and Won-Young Kim, Testing the nuclear test-ban treaty, NATURE, 389, 781782, October 23 1997.

David P. Schaff and Paul G. Richards, Repeating seismic events in China, SCIENCE, 303, 11761178, February 20, 2004.

Jian Zhang, Xiaodong Song, Yingchun Li, Paul G. Richards, Xinlei Sun, and Felix Waldhauser, Inner core differential motion confirmed by earthquake waveform doublets, SCIENCE, 309, 13571360, 2005.