Origin, Evolution, Structure, and Composition: A Compendium of Reflections and Observations of the Modern Seismo Lab at Caltech

Abstract

The string of words that forms the title of this book comes from Don Anderson’s classic text Theory of the Earth, whose goal was to examine the origin, evolution, structure, and composition of the Earth’s interior. The expansiveness of Anderson’s research purview, as encapsulated in these four words, and its foundational relation to nearly all branches of geophysics and seismology, speaks to Anderson’s role as one of the most significant and longest-tenured faculty members of Caltech’s Seismo Lab. As a student of Frank Press, Anderson also served as a generational bridge that linked the Lab’s classical era and its location in a secluded mansion in the San Rafael hills, to the modern era which brought the Lab to campus, and which intellectually and physically enjoined Caltech seismology to the broader array of disciplines within the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences. As director of the Seismo Lab from 1967 until 1989, Anderson oversaw and embraced this crucial transition. His own research was singular in its range, and he fostered a communal intellectual environment, with the all-important coffee break as its anchor point, so that everyone at the Seismo Lab, from graduate students to senior faculty, was aware of one another’s current research.