Cinna Lomnitz

Cinna Lomnitz Aronsfrau (4 May 1925 – 7 July 2016) was a Chilean-Mexican geophysicist known for his contributions in the fields of rock mechanics and seismology. Lomnitz was born to a Jewish family in Cologne, Germany. He graduated as engineer from the University of Chile in 1948. He then studied with Karl von Terzaghi in Harvard University and obtained a Master's degree in soil mechanics there.
Lomnitz received his doctorate from Caltech in 1955 with a dissertation on creep measurements in igneous rocks. Its principal thesis was reformulated as the "Lomnitz Law" by Harold Jeffreys in 1958. Lomnitz was the founding director of the Instituto de Geofísica at the Universidad de Chile. He then taught 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. He founded Mexico's first seismic network, RESMAC, in 1971, and became editor of the journal Geofísica Internacional in 1990. Lomnitz authored a number of books, notably Global Techtonics and Earthquake Risk (Elsevier, 1974).
He is the father of Jorge Lomnitz (1954-1993), Claudio Lomnitz, Alberto Lomnitz and Tania Lomnitz. Cinna Lomnitz died in Mexico City in 2016 at the age of 91.