Inge Lehmann

Inge Lehmann ( born May 13, 1888 Østerbro, Copenhagen, Denmark, † February 21, 1993 in Copenhagen) was a Danish Geodätin and seismologist.

Inge Lehmann was born as a daughter of the experimental psychologist Alfred Lehmann (1858-1921) in Copenhagen East, where she grew up also. Her family was an old-established family in Copenhagen, which included Orla Lehmann.

Your education she received at a pedagogically progressive school, which was led by Hanna Adler, an aunt of Niels Bohr. By his own admission, her father and Adler had a decisive influence on their career. After leaving school she studied with some disease-related interruptions mathematics at the universities of Copenhagen and Cambridge, and was after a few years working in the insurance industry in 1925 assistant to the geodesics Niels Erik Nørlund, who commissioned the building of seismological observatories in Denmark and Greenland. During this time, their interest in seismology began. In 1928 she made ​​her exam in geodesy and entered a position as a state Geodätin and director of the Seismological Department at the Geodetic Institute.

In an article from 1936 entitled simply P ' she performed for the first time P-wave seismograms in inserts that mysteriously are in the P-wave shadow of the Earth's core, as reflections of an inner core of the Earth. This interpretation was adopted in the two or three following years by other leading seismologists as Beno Gutenberg, Charles Richter and Harold Jeffreys. The Second World War and the occupation of Denmark by the German Wehrmacht restricted Lehmann's work and their international contacts considerably.

In recent years, until her retirement in 1953, the air between her and other members of the Geodetic Institute deteriorated. After 1953 Inge Lehmann retired for several years in the United States and worked with Maurice Ewing and Frank Press together in the investigation of the crust and upper mantle. They discovered another seismic discontinuity, which is located at an intermediate depth 190-250 miles and commonly after their discoverer as " Lehmann discontinuity " is known.

Awards

Inge Lehmann is one of the leading international seismologists. For her performance, she received numerous honors and awards, including the Harry Oscar Wood Award ( 1960), the Emil Wiechert Medal ( 1964), the Gold Medal of the Royal Danish Academy of Science and Writings ( 1965), the Tagea Brandt Award ( 1938 and 1967), the designation of Fellow of the Royal Society ( 1969), the William Bowie medal ( 1971) and the medal of the Seismological Society of America (1977 ), and honorary doctorates from Columbia University, New York, ( Sc. D. hc, 1964) and the University of Copenhagen ( Dr. phil. hc, 1968) and numerous honorary memberships.

Since 1997, the American Geophysical Union ( AGU) gives after Lehmann Inge Lehmann Medal named.

In honor of the scientist also the asteroid ( 5632 ) Inge Lehmann was named.

Important publications

• Lehmann, Inge (1936 ): P '. Publications du Bureau Central International Séismologique A14 (3 ), pp. 87-115