Peter Langdon Ward
| Peter Langdon Ward | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
August 10, 1943 Washington D.C., United States |
| Residence | U.S. |
| Citizenship | American |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Earthquakes, volcanism, regional plate tectonics, the causes of climate change and extreme weather, and living more safely with natural hazards |
| Institutions | U.S. Geological Survey, Teton Tectonics, and Science Is Never Settled |
| Alma mater | Dartmouth College, Columbia University |
Peter Langdon Ward is a geophysicist specializing in seismology and volcanology.
Peter Langdon Ward is an American Earth scientist and geophysicist who has studied microearthquakes associated with active fault systems and volcanic eruptions throughout the western United States, Alaska, Hawaii, Iceland, Central America, and the East African Rift System. He developed a Prototype global volcano surveillance system that relayed data through the ERTS satellite. He was born August 10, 1943, in Washington, D.C. and was educated at the Noble and Greenough School (1955–1961), Dartmouth College (BA 1965), and Columbia University (MA, 1967, PhD 1970).
In January, 1975, he was appointed Chief of the Branch of Seismology, a group of 140 scientists and staff at the United States Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California, playing a lead role in the development of, and initial management of, the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program. This Branch became the Branch of Earthquake Mechanics and Prediction, conducting scientific research aimed at predicting the time of occurrence of damaging earthquakes at a time when such research appeared promising worldwide.
Ward’s work to educate the general public about earthquake hazards included writing, producing, and finding funding for a 24-page magazine about the Next Big Earthquake distributed in English, Chinese, Spanish and Braille to 3.3 million homes via 41 newspapers throughout the San Francisco Bay Area of California. Ward won the Public Service Award from the Secretary of Interior, the top award of the National Association of Government Communicators, and was runner up for Federal Employee of the Year in 1991. This magazine set a whole new standard for public education about natural hazards that has been emulated widely. It was featured on Good Morning America.
Ward worked to develop protocols for rapid warning by government officials of people at immediate risk from natural or manmade hazards. He chaired a committee of government scientists at the White House (1997–1998) and, as Founding Chairman of the Board for the public/private Partnership for Public Warning (2002–2004), he laid the foundation for FEMA Wireless Emergency Alerts.
Ward contributed to an understanding of how geologic records of volcanism in western North America relate in detail to motions of tectonic plates under the eastern Pacific Ocean.
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