Keiiti Aki

Keiiti Aki
Born	March 3, 1930 Yokohama
Died	May 17, 2005
Residence	USA
Nationality	Japanese
Fields	Geophysics
Institutions	MIT University of Southern California
Alma mater	University of Tokyo
Influenced	Thomas H. Jordan

Keiiti Aki (安芸 敬一, Aki Keiichi, March 3, 1930 – May 17, 2005) was a Japanese-American professor of Geophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), seismologist, author and mentor. He co-authored with Paul G. Richards, "Quantitative Seismology: theory and methods".

Aki was born in Yokohama, Japan. He received his bachelors and doctorate degree from the University of Tokyo and then did post-doctoral research at the California Institute of Technology.

Aki was very active in his field and was the president or chair of many organizations. He was the president of Seismological Section of the AGU, president of the Seismological Society of America, and Chair of the NAS Committee on Seismology. He was instrumental in the creation of the Southern California Earthquake Center, headquartered at the University of Southern California, in 1991.

Honors received

• Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1973)
• Election to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (1979)
• Medal of Seismological Society of America (1986)
• Thorarinsson Medal from the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior (2000)
• William Bowie Medal of the American Geophysical Union (2004)
• Beno Gutenberg Medal of the European Geosciences Union (2005)

Selected publications

• Aki, Keiiti (1966). "4. Generation and propagation of G waves from the Niigata earthquake of June 14, 1964. Part 2. Estimation of earthquake moment, released energy and stress-strain drop from G wave spectrum". Bulletin of the Earthquake Research Institute 44: 73–88. http://www.iris.edu/seismo/quakes/1964niigata/Aki1966b.pdf. 
• Aki, Keiti; Richards, Paul G. (2002). Quantitative seismology (2 ed.). University Science Books. ISBN 0-935702-96-2. 

Preceded by None

Southern California Earthquake Center Director 1991 – 1995

Succeeded by Thomas Henyey

References

• Pearce, Jeremy (May 27, 2005). "Keiiti Aki, 75, Is Dead; Developed a Way to Measure the Strength of an Earthquake". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/27/obituaries/27aki.html?_r=1&oref=slogin 
• "Biographical Sketch for: Keiiti Aki" (PDF). http://www.iris.edu/seismo/quakes/1964niigata/Bio4Aki.pdf. Retrieved 2008-04-05. 
• AKI, Keiiti International Who's Who. accessed September 3, 2006.