SCEC INSTANeT News
	Keiiti Aki, Former SCEC Science Director, Retires A Personal Perspective on the Aki Science Symposium

By Michael R. Forrest, Feature Writer, SCEC INSTANeT News On May 24 1965 Charles Richter, inventor of the Richter magnitude scale, sent Frank Press his impressions of a (then) relatively unknown seismologist named Keiiti Aki. In his letter he wrote, "Dr. Aki is one of the brightest and most original of the very productive group of younger Japanese seismologists and geophysicists who have been coming forward in the last ten or fifteen years..." In an uncharacteristically effusive endorsement, Richter declared that Aki "would be welcome here at Caltech at any time on any status from visitor up to permanent staff member." Richter ended his message with "Like other parents, the Japanese give their children nice names. "Kei" means respect, or honor; "iti" (=ichi) means "number one." This time the parents were right." Thirty-five year later, Richter probably wouldn't have been surprised by the size, significance, and practicality of Aki's contributions to seismology - parts of which were reviewed at a SCEC-sponsored Symposium in honor of his retirement, held March 16-18 at USC. (Fortunately Richter was able to send Aki his own salutation, of sorts, across the decades, with the recent discovery of his forgotten endorsement (below). He of course had never seen it until the symposium, nearly 35 years later.) With over fifty of the world's finest seismologists and Aki's universally successful former graduate students in attendance, the Aki Symposium was both a stimulating refresher on his elegant physics ­ which carried "classical" seismology into the modern computer-chip era ­ and a celebration of what his seminal work has become. Two days of seminars with titles such as "Calculations of Synthetic Seismograms with the Aki-Larner Method and Discrete Wave Number Representation," reviewed many breakthroughs: the seismic moment, seismic tomography, the barrier model, coda analysis, SCEC, and to quote Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, "etcetera, etcetera, etcetera..." The brain twisting geophysical seminar presentations were followed by two dinners (one formal, one informal) in USC's venerable halls, which shook and echoed with bittersweet testimonials, thanks, and happy memories. To record all the anecdotes and witticisms from seminar participants would require a Penguin Classic worth of pages: to many, a teacher; to some of his students, a magician; to anyone who knew and worked with him: soft-spoken, elegant, a genius. Aki's parting speech at the dinner ended with a few of those diamonds he occasionally leaves at the dinner table ­ sentences that give some insight as to why he has been so successful ­ sentences which help explain why he physically appears to be twenty years younger than he is. During his parting speech Aki smiled one of those unforgettably radiant smiles and admitted that he has always possessed that joyful feeling ­ that unique thrill ­ that people usually feel when they finish a Ph.D., or embark on some new, exciting journey: the feeling that life is just beginning. I got the impression Aki has allowed himself to feel that thrill most every morning of his life. Thank you, Keiiti Aki, for your amazingly generous gifts to all who know you and all who will study in your field: the gifts of your ideas, your imagination, your contributions to science.		Keiiti Aki: A Brief Biosketch Born in Yokahama, Japan on 3 March 1930, Keiiti Aki is the author/co-author of some 200 papers on seismology. He is co-author (together with Paul Richards) of the seismologist's bible: "Quantitative Seismology." Aki received his Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo in 1958 and worked as a post-doc at Caltech in the early 1960s. He taught at MIT from 1966 until 1984, at which time he joined the University of Southern California (where he occupied the Keck Chair, Department of Earth Sciences). Aki was the first science director for the Southern California Earthquake Center, a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an honorary foreign fellow of the European Union of Geosciences. He was the 10th recipient of the Medal of the Seismological Society of America. He is probably the most widely cited seismologist of the latter half of the 20th century. (Many if not most of the seismologists who attended Aki's Retirement symposium conference would argue he is unquestionably the most important seismologist of the last 50 years.) Aki is currently living on La Reunion Island where he studies volcanic earthquakes. He is also currently helping to create a SCEC-like consortium in Japan. Aki once commented that much of his success in geophysics may be due in part to the fact that early in his schooling, "I fell in love with the complexity of the world."
We invite members of the SCEC Community and all others who knew and worked with Kei Aki, or who attended the symposium, to write to us and contribute to the growing number of tributes to Aki and his work. The author of this article is preparing a Website that will feature these and other contributions. Please send your contributions to scecinfo@usc.edu.

Letter of Recommendation for Kei Aki from Charles Richter to Frank Press (Courtesy of California Institute of Technology Archives):

Phone 213/740-5843 Fax 213/740-0011 e-mail: SCECinfo@usc.edu