Richter's Scale: Measure of an Earthquake, Measure of a Man
By, Susan Elizabeth Hough
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Class No.: 551.22092 SUS
Accession No.: 015871
Year: 2007
Pages: 336 p.

Of the week: 04th June. to 10th June, 2007

Written by a seismologist about the most famous seismologist, this biography of Charles Richter (1900-85) is the first researched from Richter's papers. Empathetic toward but puzzled by her subject, whom colleagues esteemed professionally but regarded as eccentric and socially awkward, Hough considers various explanations of her subject's personality. Her inspections of Richter's psyche may expand her readership beyond that interested in earthquakes to that, for example, interested in Asperger's syndrome since Hough suggests that Richter suffered from this form of autism. Richter had the intelligence and a preoccupation with detail necessary to synthesizing seismological measurements into the magnitude scale that bears his name. A nudist and a poet, Richter, however difficult to like in life--he had few friends, according to Hough--proves to have had the turbulent inner life and struggles with the external world of which compelling biographies are made.