Professor Emeritus Bruce A. Bolt
285 McCone Hall
Phone (510) 642-7030
Fax (510) 643-9980
boltuc@socrates.berkeley.edu

Professor Bruce A. Bolt was born "Down Under" in Australia in 1930. He was schooled at the University of Sydney for an honors degree in Applied Mathematics. And then appointed to the faculty in the Mathematics Department. After completion of a Ph.D. in elastic wave theory, he won a Fulbright scholarship to Lamont Geological Observatory at Columbia University in 1960, and to Cambridge University in 1961. There, a chance meeting with the late Perry Byerly, Professor of Seismology at U.C. Berkeley, led to an invitation to a chair in seismology at U.C. Berkeley in 1963.

Although the promise of another 1906 earthquake has not eventuated, many more challenging events have. At UCB, he was the Director of the University of California Seismographic Stations for 28 years;Chairman of the UCB Academic Senate in 1992-1993 and recipient of the University Citation in 1992. He has been Chairman of the California Seismic Safety Commission, President of the California Academy of Sciences (its Medallist in 1989) and President of the Seismological Society of America. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1978, Overseas Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge University in 1980, and Associate of the Royal Astronomical Society, London in 1987.

He received the Alfred Alquist Medal of the California Earthquake Safety Foundation in 1995. He has made many post-earthquake investigation and has written six and edited eight textbooks on earthquakes, geology and computers, among other topics. After emeritus status in 1993 his time is now taken up with engineering consulting, writing, sailing and enjoying the trails near the family cabin at Bear Valley, California.