GUTENBERG, BENO

GUTENBERG, BENO (1889–1960), geophysicist. Born in Darmstadt, from 1912 to 1923 Gutenberg was assistant at the International Seismological Bureau at Strasbourg. He was then appointed teacher at Frankfurt University, where he became professor in 1926. In 1930 he emigrated to the U.S. to take up the position of professor of geophysics and meteorology at the California Institute of Technology, Pasedena, where in 1946 he became director of the Seismological Laboratory. Gutenberg was the president of the International Association for Seismology (1951–54) and a member of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington. As one of the outstanding seismologists of the last decades, he confirmed the occurrence of earthquakes down to depths of 375 mi. (600 km.) and was the originator of the hypothesis of continental spreading (Fliess theory). He carefully analyzed the available information on the earth's interior and made the first exact determination of the earth's core at 1812 mi. (2,900 km.) below the surface and detected the "asthenosphere channel" at a depth of 62–124 mi. (100–200 km.). This discovery had a critical influence on identifying elastic waves produced by large artificial explosions. He also investigated the nature of the atmosphere. On the basis of the research of Lindemann and Dobson, Gutenberg revolutionized existing conceptions. He maintained that at the height of 31 mi. (50 km.) the temperature was probably as high as on the earth's surface, and that the composition of the atmosphere remained unchanged up to a height of 94 mi. (150 km.). He contributed a lot to modern geophysical ideas on the earth's crust and mantle. Among his works are Seismische Bodenunruhe (1924), Der Aufbau der Erde (1925), Grundlagen der Erdbebenkunde (1927), Lehrbuch der Geophysik (1929), the important Handbuch der Geophysik (1930), Seismicity of the Earth (with C.F. Richter, 1941), Internal Constitution of the Earth (1939), and Physics of the Earth's Interior (1959). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: P. Byerly, in: Science, 131 (April 1960), 965–6; R. Stoneley, in: Nature, 186 (May 7, 1960), 433–4.