The medal of the Seismological Society of America was

established as Article XII of the Constitution and Bylaws in the 1975 annual

election. The Medal recognizes outstanding contributions in Seismology

and Earthquake Engineering. The twelfth award, in 1989, was made to

Dr. Robert E. Wallace

Allen, Clarence R.

Filson, John R.

Hanks, Thomas C.

Wallace, Robert E.

Caltech Authors - Main

Photographs courtesy of R. McKenzie. 
Twelfth Award of the Medal of the 
Seismological Society of America 
The MEDAL OF THE SEISMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA was 
established as Article X I I  of the Constitution and Bylaws in the 1975 annual 
election. The Medal recognizes outstanding contributions in Seismology 
and Earthquake Engineering. The twelfth award, in 1989, was made to 
Dr. Robert E. Wallace. 
CITATION 
The twelfth award of this Medal hon- 
ors Dr. Robert E. Wallace for his work 
and leadership in geological research 
that have linked the disciplines of seis- 
mology and geology and have empha- 
sized the simple truth that they are, in- 
deed, one. Bob's studies over the past 25 
years have extended the time dimension 
of seismology from the units of the clock 
to the counting of the centuries. He has 
timed earthquakes not with the milli- 
meter scale and the computer cursor but 
with the map, the rod, and the compass, 
and in doing so has been a pioneer in 
opening the field of paleoseismology. 
While continuing to make significant ad- 
vances in research, Bob has been a leader 
in our profession working effectively 
to bring engineers, geologists, and seis- 
mologists together in their efforts to 
understand and mitigate the effects of 
earthquakes. 
Fifty-one years ago this spring, Bob 
Wallace graduated from Northwestern 
University with a Bachelor of Science 
degree in Geology. He went to Pasadena 
and spent 4 years from 1938 to 1942 as 
a graduate student at the California In- 
stitute of Technology. With the nation 
engaged in World Was II, Bob joined the 
U. S. Geological Survey in May 1942, 
serving in the Branch of Alaskan Geol- 
ogy. In 1946, he received his Ph.D. de- 
gree from Caltech and shortly thereafter 
published his thesis in the Bulletin of the 
Geological Society o[ America in the paper 
entitled "Structure of a portion of the 
San Andreas rift in southern California." 
This truly classic paper represents the 
first detailed geological study of a seg- 
ment of the San Andreas fault, empha- 
sizing the significance of Holocene fault- 
ing decades before such studies became 
commonplace. 
2000 
TWELFTH MEDAL AWARD OF SSA 2001 
Including his temporary employment 
status while teaching at Washington 
State University, Bob has spent over 47 
years with the Geological Survey. For 
two decades following World War II, 
Bob worked mostly on matters relating 
to ore deposition and strategic minerals, 
although his work in the Coeur d'Alene 
mining district anticipated much of the 
present interest in seismogenic mecha- 
nisms of mesothermal ore deposition. 
Between 1956 and 1960 as field geologist 
and 1960 to 1965 as Branch Chief, Bob's 
work in and around the Humbolt Range, 
Nevada, developed his long-standing in- 
terest in active faults and earthquakes 
in the Basin and Range Province. 
Bob returned to the San Andreas fault 
in 1965, this time in central California. 
At a time when earthquake research was 
virtually the exclusive domain of seis- 
mologists-now armed with new world- 
wide and regional networks, large 
aperture arrays, and substantial sums 
of money from the Department of De- 
fense-Bob became the champion of a 
cause that was then held by only a hand- 
ful of Earth scientists: that both the 
cause and effect of crustal earthquakes 
strongly imprint the geologic record, 
whether or not systems of inertial seis- 
mographs were operating at the time. 
Although the origins of paleoseismol- 
ogy date back to G. K. Gilbert in the late 
19th century, Gilbert's seminal work on 
the geologic effects of prehistoric earth- 
quakes had largely been forgotten by the 
mid-1960's. Bob and a very small num- 
ber of other geologists breathed new life 
into this field in the decade of 1965 to 
1975, from which time it has expanded 
to be the virtual cornerstone that it is 
today for any rational assessment of 
earthquake hazard and risk. His 1968 
paper documenting 9 meters of offset 
along the San Andreas fault associated 
with the 1857 earthquake is a classic, 
and a paper in 1970 set the stage for the 
now common use of long-term fault-slip 
rates in quantitative hazard evaluation. 
And his 1977 paper, "Profiles and ages 
of young fault scarps, north-central 
Nevada," literally initiated a whole new 
discipline, founded on the realization 
that the detailed morphology of fault 
scarps could be used to date the earth- 
quakes that caused them. 
Perhaps of equal importance, Bob 
played a significant role in bringing the 
National Earthquake Hazards Reduc- 
tion Program (NEHRP) into existence 
in 1977 and in assuring, against long 
odds, that it contained and maintained 
a strong geological component, in both 
research and application. Bob's com- 
mitment to expanded programs in 
earthquake research is long standing. 
In summarizing the results of a small 
conference on earthquake problems 
held at the Stanford Research Institute 
in 1960, Bob laid out all of the basic 
elements of the NEHRP as we know it 
today. 
In the Geological Survey, Bob has 
served as a Deputy to the Assistant Chief 
Geologist in Washington, D. C., Assist- 
ant Chief Geologist for the Western 
Region, Project Director of the San 
Francisco Bay Region Study; Chief of 
the National Center for Earthquake Re- 
search, and between 1974 and the time 
of his retirement, Chief Scientist of the 
Office of Earthquake studies, now the 
Office of Earthquake, Volcanoes, and 
Engineering. Bob has received the Mer- 
itorious and Distinguished Service 
Awards of the Department of Interior. 
He "retired" 2 years ago the age of 71, 
but he is still actively involved in re- 
search and national committees con- 
vened to guide various disciplines within 
the Earth sciences. 
Bob has been a member of our Society 
since 1964 and served on its Board of 
Directors from 1976 to 1979. He has 
published a number of papers in the 
Bulletin of the Society. Among his most 
recent contributions i his editing of the 
1986 National Academy of Sciences vol- 
ume, "Active Tectonics." This remarka- 
2002 TWELFTH MEDAL AWARD OF SSA 
ble compendium could have easily been 
dedicated to Bob himself, who literally 
pioneered many of the state-of-the-art 
studies ummarized therein. 
Certainly one of Bob's most signifi- 
cant professional contributions has been 
his statesmanlike l adership in bringing 
geologists, eismologists, and earthquake 
engineers together. Both within the 
Geological Survey and in the broader 
scientific-engineering community, Bob 
has worked continuously, vigorously, 
and unselfishly to help create an envi- 
ronment of mutual respect and mutual 
purpose among sometimes dissident ele- 
ments. 
Those of us who have had the pleasure 
to know Bob personally recognize that 
he is a warm, humble, and, humane per- 
son. Perhaps Bob's most outstanding 
and infectious trait is his optimism. If 
one ever needs cheering up, a talk or 
visit with Bob Wallace is recommended. 
He is an excellent host and many of us 
have enjoyed lovely evenings at his 
home, the walls of which are graced with 
his own paintings, while he and his dear 
wife Trudy provided sustenance for the 
body and soul. Bob loves nature and 
enjoys longs walks looking at the birds, 
trees, and flowers. Bob also, we believe, 
loves people. It is hard for anyone to 
recall Bob speaking ill of another being. 
Borrowing the words of another, it can 
be said that Bob has seen ". . .  the books 
in the running brooks, the sermons in 
the stones, and the good in every thing." 
This Society and society in general 
owe Bob a profound ebt of gratitude for 
his science and his service. In recog- 
nition of this debt, the Seismological 
Society of America humbly and gladly 
honors Robert E. Wallace as the Twelfth 
Recipient of its Medal. 
John R. Filson 
Thomas C. Hanks 
Clarence R. Alien 
RESPONSE 
Thank you John, Tom, and Clarence. 
It was with disbelief that I heard Pres- 
ident Sheldon Alexander tell me by 
phone last summer that I had been se- 
lected to be the 1989 Medalist of the 
Seismological Society of America--and 
disbelief especially at this moment be- 
cause so many of you should be standing 
here instead of me. You have granted me 
an honor that I shall treasure always. 
My disbelief is especially confounding 
when I consider the circuitous path of 
science I have followed over the past 50 
years. While doing field work in Alaska 
I discovered one day at lunchtime that I 
was sitting on pieces of quartz loaded 
with visible gold. I was sure then that I 
always would be an economic geologist, 
and, of course, a rich one. Indeed, I was 
the former for over 20 years, but never 
the latter. Another time, the thrill of 
discovering a column of Plesiosaur ver- 
tebrae sticking out of the Panoche Hills 
in California convinced me that my fu- 
ture lay in paleontology. Similarly, I was 
sure at one point that I found my true 
scientific home in the Precambrian Belt 
Series of Idaho and Montana, a far cry 
from earthquake studies. After manag- 
ing the first USGS permafrost program 
in 1945, I was approached by a Colonel 
Orr of the Air Force, who offered me an 
opportunity to head up their new Snow, 
Ice, and Permafrost program. I signed 
the papers, and waited. But fate inter- 
vened when Colonel Orr was killed while 
practicing parachute jumps. Except for 
fate, I would today be an iceman, or 
perhaps a snowman. 
Then came a love affair with the great 
block faults of the Basin and Range 
province, as well as the great thrust 
faults and d~collement there. But of 
course that love affair with faults had its 
beginning with a thesis on the San An- 
dreas fault while at Cal Tech in the late 
1930s and early 1940s. A course under 
Charles Richter, which included real-life 
earthquakes during the class, no doubt 
was the true premonitory signal for to- 
2003 
2004 TWELFTH MEDAL AWARD OF SSA 
day's event. But enough of reminiscing. 
Let's look ahead. That's the important 
direction. 
In a sense, the future is synonymous 
with prediction, whether by the name of 
forecasting, probabilistic seismic hazard 
assessment, mitigation, preparation, or 
response--the fundamental thing is 
looking forward, or predicting. Despite 
enormous advances in our understand- 
ing of the earthquake process over the 
past 20 years, I believe that in 200 years 
we will look back on 1989 as near the 
very beginning of prediction and risk 
assessment. 
As scientists of the Earth, our under- 
standing may be not much better than 
that of the physicians in George Wash- 
ington's day, who, with the best of inten- 
tions, treated George during his terminal 
illness by bleeding him again and again. 
We earth scientists, knowing so little 
about how the Earth works, very possi- 
bly are bleeding our patients, if only 
figuratively. For example, by not having 
a precise forecast of risk and probabili- 
ties, yet talking tens of billions of dollars 
in potential damage and thousands of 
casualties in a great earthquake, we have 
frightened the populace and increased 
the demand for earthquake insurance. 
The industry has responded by increas- 
ing the deductible to a point where the 
insurance is of questionable value to a 
homeowner. 
Currently, our first line of defense 
against great earthquakes is the de- 
sign and construction of earthquake- 
resistant structures. I heartily endorse 
that approach. But what if the new rev- 
elation just now emerging from paleo- 
seismology proves to be significant for 
most intracontinental regions? I refer to 
the discovery that large earthquakes 
tend to cluster in time at a given site and 
that individual clusters are interspaced 
by thousands, even tens of thousands, 
of years of quiescence. During 10,000 
years of quiescence, which represents 
100 or more construction cycles, would 
it make economic sense to add from two 
to six percent cost to each cycle, 200 to 
600 percent all told, to protect against 
an earthquake that would not occur, 
could not occur, during the period? If 
only we could know! Perhaps in our ig- 
norance, with our inability to predict 
either the likelihood of, or the future 
absence of large earthquakes, we will be 
bleeding resources that could be better 
used for other needs of society. Igno- 
rance is costly! 
Similarly, let us consider California's 
Special Studies Zone Act. In my opinion, 
the act is an inspired and important 
legislative step toward hazard mitiga- 
tion. The act is intended to reduce the 
hazard represented by potential fault 
shearing. But is it appropriate to require 
the same exploration and evaluation ef- 
forts along an active fault where the 
potential fault offset is likely to be meas- 
ured in millimeters (if only we could be 
sure) as at sites where it is likely to be 
meters? I believe that it is now time to 
consider modification and refinement of 
the act and to consider better definitions 
of "active faults." Our current legal def- 
initions of an "active fault" (and there 
are several) are woefully inappropriate, 
because we were unprepared scientifi- 
cally to provide intelligent guidance at 
the time those definitions were fixed in 
legal precedences. Now we can look for- 
ward to extended, costly, years of argu- 
ment to rectify those mistakes. 
But you, seismologists, engineers, ge- 
ologists, sociologists, and economists, 
have developed a process and demon- 
strated that by working together on a 
global basis very complex problems can 
be tackled successfully. That process 
starts from a scientific and technical 
base, which drives administrative policy 
and implementation. As important is 
that we have learned these elements 
must evolve and develop concurrently. If
the science is adequate, effective miti- 
gation and response techniques have a 
reasonable chance of being found and 
TWELFTH MEDAL 
developed. To the degree that the science 
of the Earth is blind, response proce- 
dures cannot even be conceived, or may 
be entirely counter-productive. 
Earthquake prediction, or forecasting, 
is not just an exciting academic exercise. 
In my opinion, it is the most fundamen- 
tal ingredient of any rational approach 
to earthquake-hazard mitigation. We 
aren't very far along. For ultimate suc- 
cess, we must consciously adopt a pre- 
dictive frame of mind. Ben Franklin 
knew that weather moved from west to 
east. We aren't even at that elementary 
stage in earthquake prediction, let alone 
to a point, as in weather forecasting, 
where every citizen can view the move- 
ment of fronts and cyclones in beautiful 
detail on the evening TV screen. I envi- 
sion being able to watch a strain front 
move across a region, just as we do 
weather fronts, and from that, knowing 
with a high degree of certainty that a 
flurry of seismic activity will occur to- 
morrow in a certain area that has 
reached a critical threshold of prepara- 
tion. Our detailed measurements of 
strain, as advanced as they seem today 
with two-color lasers and space tech- 
niques are perhaps equivalent only to 
Ben Franklin's getting a spark off the 
key on his kite string during a lightning 
storm. 
Perhaps I have overly belittled our 
AWARD OF SSA 2005 
accomplishments, because we have ac- 
complished so much during the past 
20 years. I have used a circumspect tone 
only to place those many accomplish- 
ments in proper pespective. For I sin- 
cerely say, you haven't seen anything 
yet! Successful and useful predictions of 
earthquakes are inevitable, and effective 
earthquake-hazard mitigation through- 
out the world is achievable. 
I have prevailed upon your politeness 
and patience for too many minutes now. 
Before I close, I want to express my 
gratitude and thanks to those who have 
helped me over the decades. First, for 
the opportunity odo science, my thanks 
to the U.S. Geological Survey, an orpan- 
ization without comparison for the free- 
dom and opportunities to carry out re- 
search. May it survive as an organization 
of high accomplishments, integrity, and 
credibility through these difficult times. 
On the home front, my dear wife, Trudy, 
has patiently and graciously put up with 
the obsessions and activities of an earth- 
quake nut. To you of the Seismological 
Society of America, thank you for suc- 
cumbing to the creative writing of the 
nominating committee, thus selecting 
me as an honored--yet disbelieving-- 
medalist. Thank you all; thank you very 
much. 
Robert E. Wallace 


Twelfth award of the Medal of the Seismological Society of America

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Twelfth award of the Medal of the Seismological Society of America

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