Cinna Lomnitz, German-born Chilean-Mexican geophysicist, Died at 90

  Reseacher

Cinna Lomnitz Aronsfrau was born on May 4, 1925, and died on July 7, 2016.

H was a Chilean-Mexican geophysicist known for his contributions in the fields of rock mechanics and seismology.

He was born to a Jewish family in Cologne, Germany.

Cinna graduated as a engineer from the University of Chile in 1948.

Then, he went on to study with Karl von Terzaghi in Harvard University and obtained a Master’s degree in soil mechanics there.

He gained his doctorate from CalTech in 1955 with a dissertation on creep measurements in igneous rocks.

Which principal thesis was reformulated as the “Lomnitz Law” by Harold Jeffreys in 1958.

He was the founding director of the Instituto de Geofísica at the Universidad de Chile.

Then, Lomnitz became a teacher at the University of California-Berkeley between 1964 and 1968, and moved to the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México’s Instituto de Geofísica in 1968, where he worked for the rest of his life.

Cinna Lomnitz was the one who founded Mexico’s first seismic network, RESMAC, in 1971, and became editor of the journal Geofísica Internacional in 1990.

Cinna Lomnitz passed away at 90 years old.