Frank Press

Frank Press
Born	December 4, 1924 (1924-12-04) Brooklyn, New York, United States
Nationality	American
Fields	geophysicist
Alma mater	City College of New York Columbia University

Frank Press (born December 4, 1924) is an American geophysicist.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Press was science advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1976 to 1980, and president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences from 1981 to 1993. He is the recipient of 30 honorary degrees. Named in his honor are Mount Press, in the Ellsworth Mountains, Antarctica; and Osedax frankpressi, a species of whalebone-eating marine worm.

Press graduated with a B.S. degree from the City College of New York (1944) and completed his M.A. (1946) and Ph.D. (1949) degrees at Columbia University under Maurice "Doc" Ewing. As one of Ewing's two assistant professors, (with J. Lamar "Joe" Worzel as the other) Press was a founder of Lamont Geological Observatory (now Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory) in Palisades, N.Y. Originally trained as an oceanographer, Press participated in research cruises on the sailing vessels RV Vema and RV Atlantis.

In the early 1950s, Press turned to seismology, co-authoring with Ewing (who contributed only slightly) and Jardetzky a seminal monograph on elastic waves in layered media. In 1957, Press was recruited by Caltech to succeed founder Beno Gutenberg as director of the Seismological Laboratory, a position in which he remained until 1965. The appointment was controversial in that it passed over both Hugo Benioff and Charles Richter, then the laboratory's senior professors, for a much younger outsider.

Press' accomplishments in this period include the design of a long-period seismograph, and the first detection of the Earth's normal modes of oscillation ("bell ringing"), excited by the Great Chilean Earthquake, a pioneering application of digital processing to seismic recordings. Press was also closely involved in the construction of a lunar seismograph, first deployed by the Apollo 11 astronauts (see Lunar seismology).

In 1965, Press moved to MIT as department head of Earth and Planetary Sciences, where, with significant support from philanthropist Cecil H. Green, he revitalized by new hires what had been an overly traditional geology department. He remained at MIT until 1976. During this time, his work included collaborations with Vladimir Keilis-Borok and Leon Knopoff on computer pattern matching techniques that could be applied to earthquake prediction.

In 1976, Press became science advisor to President Jimmy Carter and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. In 1981 he was elected president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Re-elected in 1987, he served for a total of 12 years. In 1996, Press co-founded the Washington Advisory Group (later renamed as the Advisory Group at Huron), which played a notable role all phases of the founding of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia. Press chaired that university's international advisory committee until 2010.

Notable accomplishments

• President of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (1981-1993)
• Chairman of the National Research Council (1981-1993)
• Science Advisor to the President of the United States, Office of Science and Technology Policy (1977-1980)
• Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy (1977-1980)
• Professor of Geophysics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Chairman of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
• Professor of Geophysics at California Institute of Technology and Director of the Caltech Seismological Laboratory
• Life Member of the Corporation of MIT
• Board member of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), the Marine Biological Laboratory, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
• Member of the advisory council of CRDF Global

Awards

• U.S. National Medal of Science
• Vannevar Bush Award
• Gold Medal Royal Astronomical Society 1971
• Pupin Medal from Columbia University
• Japan Prize from the Emperor of Japan (1993)
• Lomonosov Gold Medal Russian Academy of Science, 1997
• Officier Legion d'Honeur France
• Pick and Gavel Award from the Association of American State Geologists, 2007

Publications

• Understanding earth (ISBN 0716735040) by Press, Frank., Siever, Raymond. W.H. Freeman, c2001
• "The role of geoscientists in providing credible advice to government officials" Press, Frank. Abstracts with Programs - Geological Society of America, vol.30, no.7, pp.247, 1998
• "Growing up in the Golden Age of Science" Press, Frank. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, vol.23, pp.1-9, 1995
• "Patterns of seismic release in the Southern California region" Press, Frank; Allen, Clarence. Journal of Geophysical Research, vol. 100, no. B4, pp.6421-6430, 10 Apr 1995
• "Needed: Coherent budgeting for science and technology" Press, F. (1995) Science 270 (5241), pp. 1448-1450
• "The restructuring of science in research universities in the post-industrial society" Press, Frank. Abstracts with Programs - Geological Society of America, vol.26, no.7, pp.154, 1994
• "Geoscience education as viewed from the National Academy of Sciences" Press, Frank. Journal of Geological Education, vol.39, no.2, pp.98-100, Mar 1991
• "Science and the public welfare" Press, Frank. Earthquakes and Volcanoes, vol.22, no.3, pp.93, 1991
• "Role of education in technological competitiveness" Press, Frank (1990) Siemens review 57 (2), pp. 4
• "An international decade for natural disaster reduction" Press, Frank. USGS Open-File Report No. 88-0361, pp.53-61, 1988
• Earth (ISBN 0716717433) by Press, Frank., Siever, Raymond. W.H. Freeman, c1986.
• "Science and creationism" Press, Frank. Geotimes, vol.29, no.5, pp.9, May 1984
• "Science and technology in the White House, 1977 to 1980; Part 2" Press, Frank. Science, vol.211, no.4479, pp.249-256, 16 Jan 1981
• "Science and technology in the White House, 1977 to 1980; Part 1" Press, Frank. Science, vol.211, no.4478, pp.139-145, 09 Jan 1980
• "Earthquake Prediction" Press, Frank. Scientific American, vol.232, no.5, pp.14-23, 1975
• "Structure of the Earth and Moon: A Comparison" Press, Frank. Eos, Transactions, American Geophysical Union, vol.55, no.4, pp.323, 1974
• "The Earth and the Moon" Press, Frank. Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, vol.34, no.8, pp.732, 1972
• "Probing the earth with nuclear explosions" by Griggs, D. T., Press, Frank., Rand Corporation. (1959) Issued by the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory as UCRL-6013.