The Quake Master : Caltech’s Seismological Lab Director to Be Saluted by Museum

“Hiroo Kanamori knows more about earthquakes than anyone . . . although he probably says, ‘I don’t understand’ more than any other geophysicist,” read the citation when the Seismological Society of America gave its annual medal to the Caltech scientist two years ago.

This probably captured as well as anything the essence of Kanamori, 57, director of the Caltech Seismological Laboratory. At a time when hyperbole tinges much of the research in the competitive and spirited field of seismic science, his hallmark remains his modesty.

The Japanese-born scholar habitually cautions against drawing sweeping conclusions, dwells on the difficult details and often ends his conversations with: “This is what we don’t know yet.”

But out of the piles of papers in Kanamori’s cluttered Caltech office have come landmark findings expanding knowledge on what happens when earthquakes occur, especially the nature of seismic land ruptures and earthquake waves, the concept of slow earthquakes and the development of a new magnitude scale.

It is not only his earthquake work, but his research in other areas--on tsunami warnings, the atmospheric influences of the Mt. Pinatubo volcanic eruption and, most recently, the impact of the impending collision of a comet with Jupiter--that has helped earn Kanamori yet another prize.

On Wednesday, he will receive the California Scientist of the Year award of the California Museum of Science and Industry at a black-tie dinner. Twelve of the 36 prior awardees have gone on to receive a Nobel Prize.

To fellow professionals, though, Kanamori is known as much for his informal style as for his achievements. That style is reflected in the twice-daily coffee hours at the seismological laboratory, where ideas are introduced and discussed among seven professors, five Ph.D.s, professional associates, and 20 to 30 graduate students studying in the department.

Jim Mori, director of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Pasadena field office, across the street from the laboratory, is a frequent participant in the coffee hours, from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. and from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m.

“One thing that’s always impressed me about Dr. Kanamori is that he knows a lot about earthquakes, but he always extends that knowledge to other fields,” Mori said. “Much more than most seismologists, he’s always out there looking at other things, and what makes the coffee hours is that he comes in every day with some great new observation he’s just made.”

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Kanamori uses the coffee hours as good-humored brainstorming sessions, but, as Tom Henyey, director of the Southern California Earthquake Center at USC, observed: “He’s a very strong supporter of individual investigative research.

“He believes very strongly that science is best done and best advanced by the traditional mentor-student relationship,” Henyey said. “That contrasts sharply with some of the thinking that extols so-called big science, large numbers of people nurtured by multidisciplinary interactions and approaches. Hiroo is not a proponent of big science. He feels very good in a singular environment.”

Kanamori’s style is particularly evident in his role as director of the seismological laboratory. “My general principle is not to assign projects,” he said. Some students “expect me to give them a project, so I make some suggestions. But I’d rather that it all be up to the individuals. It’s what they’re interested in. I usually don’t discourage or encourage them. They are always welcome to come in here and discuss what they want to do.”

Born in Tokyo in 1936, the son of a moderate Japanese cabinet minister ousted that year by militarists, Kanamori received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees and Ph.D in geophysics at Tokyo University.

He remains a Japanese citizen and returns about once a year to visit his siblings, but now considers home to be Pasadena. It was as a Fulbright research fellow at Caltech in 1965-66 that he became enchanted with the smallness and informality at the school.

“Caltech is a bit intimidating, because of the brilliant minds here,” he remarks with a smile. “Interacting with those people is intimidating.”

But he adjusted quickly to the school, where he has been a professor since 1972. His wife, Keiko, who had studied English literature in Japan, got a Ph.D. in chemistry at Caltech and his younger son, Tadashi, is a senior there. His other son, Atsushi, earned a Ph.D. in computer science at Stanford University.

Kanamori is a realist, which is perhaps most apparent when he discusses one of his favorite subjects: the current fascination--among scientists and the public--with earthquake prediction.

During a recent interview, Kanamori warned that this fascination may be misdirected, at least as far as major urban centers such as Los Angeles and Tokyo is concerned.

“Prediction is an exciting topic, but very difficult,” he said. “Certain things, like earthquakes, cannot be predicted precisely.

“In China or India, you can tell people to sleep outside for two weeks,” he said. “You can’t do that in L.A. There’s too big a chance of giving a false alarm, and we may never be able to say how big the earthquake is going to be, even if we do gain an ability to predict one at a general time.”

Kanamori’s remarks were made before an alert was issued Sunday by federal and state authorities of a possible impending magnitude 6 earthquake near Parkfield in Central California. But alerts last year and earlier this year at heavily instrumented Parkfield proved unwarranted and demonstrated the imprecision of predictive quake science at this stage.

Kanamori believes that the top priority here should be construction codes, lifeline protection and other steps to mitigate the effect of the Big One.

“You can’t make L.A. go away,” he said. “We have built it, and now we have to take the best advantage of developing technology to protect it.”

At the moment, however, Kanamori is preoccupied with his project of trying, at the behest of colleagues, to calculate the impact that the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 will have when it hits Jupiter in July. It will hit the side not visible to Earth.

As usual, he is most inclined to point out difficulties and imprecision. “Initially, they thought it was 10 kilometers wide,” he said. “Now, it may be one kilometer. So there’s uncertainty of size. And there’s uncertainty of density by a factor of three.

“So, we’re going to have to give a range,” he said. “Initially, they were talking about an impact on Jupiter of similar scope to the asteroid that may have killed the dinosaurs here 65 million years ago.

“But I don’t know. It’s kind of an intellectual exercise at this stage.”

And undoubtedly he was thinking: “This is what we don’t know yet.”