KEILIS-BOROK V. I.
Born Moscow on 31/07/1921
Education
College of Exploration Geophysics, 1943; Ph.D. in
Mathematical Geophysics, 1948, D.Sci.- 1953, both Ac.Sci.USSR
Affiliations
- 1988 Ac.Sci.USSR, member
- 1971 US National Academy of Sciences
- 1969 American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- 1989 Royal Astronomical Society
- 1992 Austrian Academy of Sciences
Positions held
Seismological Institute, Ac.Sci.USSR, reorganized in
Geophysical Institute, than Institute of the Physics of the Earth:
- 1943-1948 graduate student
- 1948-1953 research fellow
- 1954-1960 senior research fellow
- 1961-1970 Chief of Laboratory
- 1970-1989 Chief of Department of Computational Geophysics
- 1989-present time Director of the above Department, reorganized into an independent International
Institute of Earthquake Prediction Theory and Mathematical Geophysics.
International Activities
- 1964-1979 Chairman, Committee for Geophysical Theory and Computers, later
Mathematical Geophysics
- 1987-1991 President, International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics
- 1993 Lecturer: Lezioni Lincee-IBM at ICTP
- Director, Computational Geophysics project at ICTP, Trieste
- International projects and workshops on mathematical geophysics
Field of Research
generally - mathematical and computational problems of Solid
Earth Sciences;
specifically - earthquake source; seismic waves in layered
media; identification of explosions (for nuclear test ban treaty);
magnetoelastic waves; inverse problem of seismology; computeriza-
tion of seismological network operation (up to hypocenters and fault-
plane solutions); probabilistic estimation of seismic risk; pattern
recognition of earthquake-prone areas; short-term dynamics of lithosphere
and earthquake prediction.
Major results
- Introduction of operator's theory into analysis of seismic waves
- Introduction of the whole record ( contrary to direction of the
first arrival only) in explosion identification
- Reformulation of inverse problem of seismology allowing for
non-uniqueness; methods to allow for and overcome it
- Confidence levels for seismic source parameters up to fault-plane
solutions
- Probabilistic estimates of seismic risk in terms of economy and
demography (particularly for megacities), world-wide
- Introduction of pattern recognition of infrequent events for joint
analysis of geophysical and geological data. Identification of
earthquake-prone areas, world-wide
- Introduction of concept of chaos in lithosphere and intermediate-term
earthquake prediction, world-wide
