Gutenberg, Beno

Gutenberg, Beno (1889–1960) seismologist; born in Darmstadt, Germany. During his graduate studies at the University of Goettingen, Germany, he made the first known correct determination of the size and composition of the earth's inner core. He left Germany in 1930 to join the seismology laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, where he collaborated with Charles F. Richter to develop the definitive scale of earthquake magnitude, then continued research on earth structure, seismic waves, and stratospheric temperatures.

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Gutenberg, Beno 

Born June 4, 1889, in Darmstadt; died Jan. 25, 1960, in Pasadena, Calif. American geophysicist. Member of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.

Gutenberg was a graduate of the University of Göttingen in Germany (1911). During the years of the fascist regime, he emigrated to the United States, where he was a professor at the California Institute of Technology and director of its seismological laboratory. He is noted for his study of the seismicity of the earth and the structure of the earth’s interior and atmosphere. Together with the American geophysicist C. Richter, he developed a scale for measuring the magnitude of earthquakes. The Gutenberg discontinuity was named in his honor.

WORKS

In Russian translation:
Seismichnost’ Zemli. Moscow, 1948.
Fizika zemnykh nedr. Moscow, 1963.