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Vitaly Ivanovich Khalturin (1927-2007)

Vitaly Khalturin, a pioneering seismologist with encyclopedic knowledge of regional seismic signals and a mentor and friend of seismologists around the world, died on 17 April 2007 in Stanford, California, four days after suffering a major stroke.

Vitaly Khalturin (second from left) in 1976, working at home with graduate students in Garm, Tajikistan. Photo by T. Rautian.

Born on 15 August 1927 in Leningrad, U.S.S.R., Vitaly grew up in war-torn and politically tumultuous surroundings. His father was a writer well-known in Russian literary circles and, from childhood on, Vitaly knew many prominent Russian authors. While still a student at the University of Leningrad he married a fellow student, Tat'yana Glebovna Rautian. After receiving their masters' degrees in 1951, the two moved to Central Asia as part of the Complex Seismological Expedition (CSE) of the U.S.S.R.'s Academy of Sciences' Institute of Earth Physics, where they would work together for more than 40 years.

Vitaly and Tat'yana spent their early years in Garm, Tajikistan, building CSE's network of seismographic stations. Far from any libraries or centers of science, they were forced to learn for themselves—from first principles in classical physics—how to design experiments and interpret seismograms. Under harsh economic circumstances, they installed and maintained an extended seismic network. They taught generations of students—from Russia, Armenia, Georgia, and each of the Central Asian republics—the rigors and joys of earthquake studies. It is remarkable that years later the quality of their work has turned out to be so informative to research groups operating with fewer obstacles and far greater resources.

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Michael Hamburger

(Indiana University)

Yuri Kopnichev

(Complex Seismological Expedition, Kazakhstan)

Anatoli Levshin

(University of Colorado)

Vladislav Martynov

(University of California, San Diego)

Natalya Mikhailova

(National Data Centre, Kazakhstan)

Peter Molnar

(University of Colorado)

Paul G. Richards

(Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University)

Steve Roecker

(Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)

David Simpson

(The IRIS Consortium)

Brian E. Tucker

(GeoHazards International)

Robert Wesson

(U.S. Geological Survey)