In memory of Tom Hanks (1944 – 2024)

Tribute to Thomas C. Hanks, a USGS geophysicist who demonstrated himself as a generous educator and pioneering scientist.

By Wayne Thatcher, USGS

Latest photo of Tom Hanks. Credit: Molly Hanks, Tom's daughter

Tom was one of a kind, and one of my oldest friends. We met as graduate students at Caltech in the late 1960s. He stood out from the start: very confident, had the air of a Princeton boy, and blew smoke rings with his lucky strikes. like this. His high intelligence was evident, and his intellectual curiosity was insatiable. He needed to know how the Earth worked; He was going to find out and he was going to make his mark.

He and I bonded on a trip to England in 1968, where we attended an international scientific meeting (which wasn't very good), and then briefly visited Ireland and Wales. Tom has never traveled outside the country, while I spent a gap year in Europe. I never cared much for beer, but Tom was a gifted beer drinker. Maybe I taught him a little about international travel. He definitely taught me how to drink beer. And so we became lifelong friends.

As a graduate student, Tom had highly innovative ideas and wide-ranging and eclectic interests. These topics included the thermal history of the Earth, flexure of the oceanic lithosphere in island arcs, and the thermomechanics of mid-ocean ridges, in addition to his main thesis on the mechanics of seismic sources. It all led to well-received publications by the time Tom earned his Ph.D. In 1972.

Collaborating with Tom as students, and later as professionals at the USGS, was an amazing journey. We were ambitious, competitive and hardworking – striving to succeed. And if I may say so now, we were probably a little too full of ourselves.

Jim Brun, our thesis advisor, has written a fascinating theoretical paper on earthquake source characteristics with clear and immediate application to the analysis of Caltech's local seismogram collection. As a result, Tom and I worked hard over several years to publish several influential and well-cited papers while still graduate students. We've certainly launched well, and are certainly pleased with ourselves.

By the mid-1970s, Tom and my scientific interests followed separate paths. Tom and his wife Paige started a family before my wife and I, so our paths inevitably diverged. However, we followed each other's research, exchanged ideas, and generally encouraged and supported each other. Tom has continued to make important contributions to seismic source studies with particular application to the estimation of strong earthquake ground motion and its relevance to earthquake engineering and probabilistic seismic hazard assessment (PSHA).

At the same time, Tom, through his personal and professional friendship with USGS seismic geologist Bob Wallace, became interested in creating, maintaining and eroding surface fault scarps produced by earthquake faulting. This interest culminated in Tom's intuitively attractive and mathematically straightforward model of the diffusive erosion of fault slopes and related landforms, such as coastal marine terraces and those created by fluvial erosion. It was an elegant and beautiful piece of science. Oh, how I wished I could think of it myself!

Tom's subsequent career included not only his continuing research interests, but also his service to the USGS and the seismic science community. He served for a time as head of the Ground Motion and Error Survey Section. He led a five-year project to estimate the upper limit on the extreme ground motions that could be expected at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, then the proposed repository for long-term nuclear waste storage for the United States. He also worked long to compose an accessible primer in English on PSHA principles and practices, which, although never formally published, was highly respected, widely read and highly influential.

Tom was a generous and selfless mentor to fellow youth and non-youth alike. He had a gift for engaging graciously in ongoing scientific conversations that generated ideas for fruitful new research. After helping to plant the seed, Tom would gracefully step back, allowing his colleague to see the project through to completion and shine in its own right.

I can speak about this approach from my own experience. By analyzing repeated GPS observations from the Tibetan Plateau, I was able to make space-based geodetic estimates of current slip rates on the largest active faults in the region. Previous work, as well as mine, has revealed significant discrepancies between these rates and independently obtained geological estimates. While discussing these controversies with Tom, he quickly identified previously unappreciated problems with geologic rates, and told me that he would write me a “paper” on the subject. Several weeks later, my own copy arrived, an original, carefully researched critique describing the serious shortcomings of the published geological interpretations. As Tom pointed out, the methodology actually provided upper and lower bound slip rates, with the lower bound being reasonably consistent with the geodesic rates. Tom's “term paper” was then circulated around a small specialist community and was soon informally accepted as a potential solution to the slippage rate paradox. Other geologists independently reached similar conclusions that later appeared in several published papers. Their geological interpretations, as well as Tom's, are now generally accepted as definitive and the rate discrepancy has been resolved. When I gratefully thanked Tom for correcting me and offered to co-author my study, he flatly declined, saying simply that he did it “for the sake of friendship.”

In the last 15 years or so of his life, I saw another, more generous side of Tom. During that time, he increasingly cared for his wife of more than 40 years, Paige, as she developed Parkinson's disease. Determined to remain at home, he took on the primary role in her care until her death in 2020. As his health subsequently declined, he nonetheless remained Tom, actively interacting with his colleagues, enjoying the families of his two daughters – especially his two granddaughters – and closely following the fate of the San Giants. Francisco. I had the good fortune to interact with him during his senior year, as I went with him to the USGS offices periodically to attend meetings and seminars. Our conversations focused mostly on current affairs, but we also shared stories about our good old days – some of which may have been true.

Tom was one of a kind, and one of my oldest friends. I, like many others, will certainly miss him.

Copyrights

Text © 2024 Tumbler. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

We publish our work – articles and maps prepared by Temblor – under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.

For more information, please see our repost guidelines or contact [email protected] with any questions.

What Are The Main Benefits Of Comparing Car Insurance Quotes Online

LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / June 24, 2020, / Compare-autoinsurance.Org has launched a new blog post that presents the main benefits of comparing multiple car insurance quotes. For more info and free online quotes, please visit https://compare-autoinsurance.Org/the-advantages-of-comparing-prices-with-car-insurance-quotes-online/ The modern society has numerous technological advantages. One important advantage is the speed at which information is sent and received. With the help of the internet, the shopping habits of many persons have drastically changed. The car insurance industry hasn't remained untouched by these changes. On the internet, drivers can compare insurance prices and find out which sellers have the best offers. View photos The advantages of comparing online car insurance quotes are the following: Online quotes can be obtained from anywhere and at any time. Unlike physical insurance agencies, websites don't have a specific schedule and they are available at any time. Drivers that have busy working schedules, can compare quotes from anywhere and at any time, even at midnight. Multiple choices. Almost all insurance providers, no matter if they are well-known brands or just local insurers, have an online presence. Online quotes will allow policyholders the chance to discover multiple insurance companies and check their prices. Drivers are no longer required to get quotes from just a few known insurance companies. Also, local and regional insurers can provide lower insurance rates for the same services. Accurate insurance estimates. Online quotes can only be accurate if the customers provide accurate and real info about their car models and driving history. Lying about past driving incidents can make the price estimates to be lower, but when dealing with an insurance company lying to them is useless. Usually, insurance companies will do research about a potential customer before granting him coverage. Online quotes can be sorted easily. Although drivers are recommended to not choose a policy just based on its price, drivers can easily sort quotes by insurance price. Using brokerage websites will allow drivers to get quotes from multiple insurers, thus making the comparison faster and easier. For additional info, money-saving tips, and free car insurance quotes, visit https://compare-autoinsurance.Org/ Compare-autoinsurance.Org is an online provider of life, home, health, and auto insurance quotes. This website is unique because it does not simply stick to one kind of insurance provider, but brings the clients the best deals from many different online insurance carriers. In this way, clients have access to offers from multiple carriers all in one place: this website. On this site, customers have access to quotes for insurance plans from various agencies, such as local or nationwide agencies, brand names insurance companies, etc. "Online quotes can easily help drivers obtain better car insurance deals. All they have to do is to complete an online form with accurate and real info, then compare prices", said Russell Rabichev, Marketing Director of Internet Marketing Company. CONTACT: Company Name: Internet Marketing CompanyPerson for contact Name: Gurgu CPhone Number: (818) 359-3898Email: [email protected]: https://compare-autoinsurance.Org/ SOURCE: Compare-autoinsurance.Org View source version on accesswire.Com:https://www.Accesswire.Com/595055/What-Are-The-Main-Benefits-Of-Comparing-Car-Insurance-Quotes-Online View photos