List of great geophysicists
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Before our time
| Name | Dates | Famous for |
|---|---|---|
| Ibn Sahl (WP) | 940-1000 | Discoverer of Snell’s Law of refraction |
| Leonardo da Vinci (WP) | 1452–1519 | See Carcione's essay |
| Willebrord Snellius (WP) | 1580-1626 | Refraction |
| René Descartes (WP) | 1596-1650 | Corpuscles and bandwidth |
| Isaac Newton (WP) | 1643-1727 | Corpuscles and bandwidth |
| Pierre de Fermat (WP) | 1601-1665 | Principle of least time, basis for principle of least work |
| Christiaan Huygens (WP) | 1629-1695 | Waves |
| Robert Hooke (WP) | 1635-1703 | Elasticity |
| Leonhard Euler (WP) | 1707-83 | Elastic properties, waves |
| Jean le Rond d'Alembert (WP) | 1717-83 | Derivation of the wave equation |
| Ernst Chladni (WP) | 1756–1827 | 'The father of acoustics' |
| Joseph Fourier (WP) | 1768-1830 | The Fourier transform! |
| Thomas Young (WP) | 1773-1829 | Elastic properties, and wave theory |
| Carl Friedrich Gauss (WP) | 1777-1855 | Too many things to list! |
| Siméon Denis Poisson (WP) | 1781–1840 | Poisson effect, probability |
| Augustin-Jean Fresnel (WP) | 1788-1827 | Interference |
| James David Forbes (WP) | 1809–68 | First seismograph |
| Robert Mallet (WP) | 1810–51 | Controlled source seismology |
| Gustav Kirchhoff (WP) | 1824-87 | Basis of common migration equation |
| James Clerk Maxwell | 1831-79 | Electromagnetic theory |
| John Strutt, Baron Rayleigh (WP) | 1842-1919 | Seismic resolution |
| Reginald Fessenden | 1866-1932 | First patent for seismic reflection imaging |
| Schlumberger brothers | Conrad 1878-1936 & Marcel 1884-1953 | Founders of Schlumberger and, less directly, CGGVeritas |
| Karl Bernhard Zoeppritz | 1881-1908 | Zoeppritz equations! |
| Andrew McNaughton | Not known | Military ranging, aided by William Lawrence Bragg, William Tucker, and others; could tell from British POV |
| John Karcher | 1894-1978 | Commercialized seismic |
| Norman Ricker | 1896-1960 | Ricker wavelet is 2nd derivative of Gaussian |
| Dennis Gabor | 1900-79 | Signal processing |
| Maurice Ewing WP | 1906-74 | Marine seismology |
| John Tukey | 1915-2000 | FFT, with Cooley (1926– ) |
| Michael Schoenberg WP | 1939–2008 | Anisotropy |
In our time
These people are more connected with seismic geophysics specifically.
| Name | Born | Famous for |
|---|---|---|
| Aki and Richards | Seismic theory | |
| Leon Thomsen | Anisotropy | |
| Sven Treitel | Seismic theory | |
| Enders Robinson | Seismic theory | |
| Brian Russell | Seismic analysis, entrepreneurship | |
| Dan Hampson | Seismic analysis, entrepreneurship | |
| Oz Yilmaz | Seismic theory |
