( 3 reviews )
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Posted: Dec 26 2007
I had such high hopes for this book. The author states that she had unprecedented access to Richter's private and professional papers and that this would give the reader an in-depth view of Richter's life. Sadly, nine chapters in the author told me we were finally going to address his professional life after chapter upon chapter of vignettes of women in his life and their relationship and impact on the development of seismology. I guess I missed the subtitle that stated this was an attempt to place women in a scientific context with respect to the development of earthquake science. But far more disturbing was the author's use of supposition. She presents a whole chapter on her case for Asperger's syndrome as an explaination of Richter's quirks. However, carefully examination of her evidence shows a number of areas where she contradicts herself. Moreover, she spends an enormous amount of time discussing what may or may not have been Richter's ample sex life, including repeated references to an insestous relationship with his sister, which may or may not have occurred. Ratheer than coming away from this book with a better understanding of the meshing of the personal and professional life of one of seismology's best known names, we are left with the National Enquirer report on Richter's life. The only area in which this book shines is it's final chapter. In it, the author clearly expresses her love and passion for seismology. As an earthquke scientist and educator she has a long and illustrious future ahead of her, that much is clear. However, as a scientist she should have realized how much supposition, in place of fact, might rankle other scientists consuming her product.
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Posted: Sep 6 2007
In "Richter's Scale" seismologist and author Susan Hough presents the first comprehensive biography of Charles Richter, famous for developing the earthquake scale that bears his name. Hough's scholarship is thorough and well-documented, and it seems she has carefully waded through every scrap of paper Richter ever wrote (and he was a compulsive diarist). Richter was a pivotal figure at a pivotal time in the science of seismology, and no historian of 20th century science can afford to ignore this book. For the general reader, however, "Richter's Scale" may prove tough going. Like Richter himself, the book suffers from a split personality. In part it's a straightforward biography of Richter, and in part a history of the development of major ideas in seismology (at least those that touched on Richter's career). Hough presents extensive evidence to suggest that Richter suffered from some sort of neurological disorder, possibly Asperger's Syndrome (a mild form of autism), and that his interests swung back and forth from science to poetry with manic instensity. If you're primarily interested in the science, be warned that there is an awful lot of poetry in this book! On the flip side, the book comes up short on some technical background information. Although the book includes numerous photographs, there are no illustrations of seismograms (the squiggles that record earth movements following an earthquake). Chapter nine in particular attempts to describe the importance of the development of a consistent system for measuring earthquakes without maps, seismograms or even data tables. Unless you already have a basic understanding of earthquake science, this chapter might stop you dead in your tracks. Most of the science in the book is centered around the seismology lab at Cal Tech where Richter spent his entire scientific career. Hough considers at length (although somewhat circumspectly) the jealousy surrounding Richter and his extensive public name recognition. Although Hough provides personal background information about several of Richter's colleagues (particularly Beno Gutenberg), more general descriptions of their scientific contributions could have provided better context. Beno Gutenberg may not be a household name like Charles Richter, but the core-mantle boundary is called the Gutenberg Discontinuity by seismologists. Hugo Benioff is immortalized by Wadati-Benioff Zones, the descending seismic belts that mark subduction zones, and even make their way into freshman textbooks! These guys were hardly obscure. Books on the history of science that make a great read are either driven by a central idea (Dava Sobel's "Longitude," or David Lindley's "Uncertainty") or by a strong and colorful personality ("Degrees Kelvin", also by David Lindley). In terms of style, Hough has fallen between these two stools. It's as if Richter's intense and divided personality imposed itself on the book. You won't regret having "Richter's Scale" on your bookshelf, but you may not read the whole thing.
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( 3 of 3 found this review helpful ) Posted: Mar 19 2007
Charles Richter is virtually the only seismologist that most of us have heard of, but almost all of us know the name. What, however, was it he did, exactly? And even if it was important, why should we care about his personal life? Well, his personal life was strange, so the idly curious might be titillated by it. The first question, though, is more directly relevant: Until somebody devised a method of quantifying earthquakes, there was no way to approach any estimate of danger. Buildings (including not just houses and schools but bridges, highways, dams and power plants) could have been designed to be earthquake-safe without Richter. But the cost can be high, so it would be wasteful to overbuild where the hazard is slight. Underbuilding can be catastrophic. The Tangshan earthquake, as recent as 1976, may have killed 750,000 people. The Chinese government has suppressed the real cost. The 2004 Sumatran quake, on the other hand, which killed close to 200,000, was not so much a matter of building design as of monitoring and evacuation warnings. So Richter's Scale is a fundamental tool by which to manage our lives. He announced it in 1935. Amazingly, according to geologist turned biographer Susan Elizabeth Hough, many people think it is a machine, like a butcher's scale. It is not a thing but a concept to organize a database. It took an unusual sort of mind to work out the scale, one capable of holding vast amounts of (at the time) diffuse data, while also having the insight to pick out the relevant relationships among the facts and the application to grind out the numbers. The last was no easy task before the digital computer. Hough speculates, at great length, that the kind of mind needed is the sort of oddly-wired mechanism found in persons born with Asperger's syndrome. This is speculative, but Richter left all his personal papers to his alma mater, California Institute of Technology, so a great more about Richter's personal demons is known than for most famous people. Much of it is in the form of poetry -- real poems, with rhymes, regular meter and punctuation. Hough finds his poems somewhat lacking in artistry. That's a matter of taste. I would rate his poetry above almost any winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the past generation. If Richter had Asperger's, and if it helped him to do significant science, it also caused him lifelong misery in his personal relationships. Although he wrote much, what he meant was not transparent. Hough has to make many speculative judgments, which she does with skill. Still, it is kind of creepy to probe that deeply into anybody else's mind -- if that, in fact, is what we're doing. Hough speculates that Richter wanted it done, otherwise he would not have left such intimate data in a public archive. Along with a collection of science fiction magazines going back to earliest days of "Amazing Stories." "Richter's Scale" is definitely what we stupidly call an "adult" book, but Richter himself, despite an "adult" lifestyle, was in some ways a Peter Pan of seismology.
