Karl Bernhard Zoeppritz

Karl Bernhard Zoeppritz ( born October 22, 1881 in Mergelstetten; † July 20, 1908 in Göttingen ) was a German geoscientists and seismologist.

Family

The geoscientists was the son of the factory owner Stefan Otto Friedrich Zoeppritz (1853-1922) and his wife Anna Maria Wilhelmina ( 1851-1925 ). His grandfather was the politician and entrepreneur Karl Zoeppritz ( 1812-1900 ). Zoeppritz was the nephew of the geographer and physicist Karl Zoeppritz ( 1838-1885 ).

Karl Zoeppritz was married in 1907 to Elizabeth Ganz ( 1886-1964 ). The couple had a daughter.

Life

Karl Zoeppritz studied geology and other scientific disciplines in Munich and Freiburg. Here he received his doctorate in 1905 with a mere geological theme. A year later, he put in Karlsruhe from the head teacher exams. During his studies he became interested in physics, and especially in geophysics, a research branch, the end of the 19th century was just beginning to develop first and was taught at that time only by Emil Wiechert at Göttingen.

Zoeppritz managed to get an assistantship under Wiechert and moved to Göttingen. He looked at the records of larger earthquakes of the period, including the famous San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Based on the theoretical work of Wiechert he created run-time curves, both published together in 1907, and the future of better identification of different should serve seismogram inserts from distant earthquakes.

Karl Bernhard Zoeppritz died in 1908 at the age of 26 years, from an infectious disease which he had contracted during the previous winter. Many of his research results have not yet been published. This took the next Wiechert Göttingen colleague Ludwig Geiger and Beno Gutenberg. The superior foresight and understanding of the young Karl Zoeppritz was for the German Geophysical Society ( DGG ) crucial to name it after him in 2003 was awarded for the first time Karl Zoeppritz Prize, to be awarded the young scientists for outstanding achievements in geophysics.

Work

A substantial progress in the interpretation of seismic wave phases was the observation of ( multiple ) reflections at the surface and converted wave trains. Zoeppritz worked intensively on the amplitude behavior of seismic waves at interfaces, depending on the angle of incidence and developed named after him Zoeppritz equations to calculate the amplitudes. In his recent research Zoeppritz derived the reflection and transmission coefficients for reflected or refracted seismic waves.

Publications

  • Geological investigations in the Upper Engadine between Albula Pass and Livigno. Inaugural Dissertation, University of Freiburg, 68pp, 1906.
  • About earthquake waves II runtime curves. News of the Royal Society of Sciences in Göttingen. Mathematics and Physical class, 529-549, in 1907.
  • With Geiger, Ludwig: About Earthquake Waves III. Calculation of distance and speed of the precursor. The Poisson's ratio within the earth. News of the Royal Society of Sciences in Göttingen. Mathematics and Physical class, 400-428, 1909.
  • With Geiger, Ludwig and Gutenberg, Beno: About earthquake waves V. constitution of the earth's interior, derived from the Bodenverrückungsverhalten once reflected to the direct longitudinal seismic waves, and some other observations on seismic waves. News of the Royal Society of Sciences in Göttingen. Mathematics and Physical class, 121-206, 1912.
  • Earthquake waves VII About reflection and passage of seismic waves by surfaces of discontinuity. News of the Royal Society, 1919.
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