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Lucy Jones: The Earthquake Lady

she blinded me with science

Lucy Jones gets tons of fan mail, including at least one marriage proposal, and was asked by a complete stranger for her autograph while in Chile, thousands of miles and a hemisphere away from her home in Pasadena, California. Why?

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Because she’s the earthquake lady.

Jones is a preeminent scientist in the field of geological study (Smithsonian Magazine calls her one of the world’s most influential, as well), particularly known for her research into predicting earthquakes. She’s influential not least because she’s managed to bridge that most important of scientific chasms: bringing scientific findings to the greater populace, and successfully explaining what it means for them specifically.

A lot of people had pondered foreshocks before Jones did, but she asked a critical question: After an earthquake, is there a statistical method to predict the chances that it was a precursor to a larger jolt? The answer was yes, as Jones demonstrated in a 1985 paper and subsequent studies analyzing every quake in the region’s recorded history. She found that the probability that an earthquake will trigger a bigger one does not depend on the magnitude of the first earthquake but instead is related to its location and interaction with fault systems.

Jones’ fascination with science and math began with her upbringing:

A fourth-generation Southern Californian, Jones grew up in the ’50s and ’60s, when girls were not typically encouraged to excel in math and science. But her father, an aerospace engineer at TRW, who worked on the first lunar module descent engine, taught his daughter to calculate prime numbers when she was 8 years old. Jones got a perfect score on a high-school science aptitude test. A guidance counselor accused her of cheating. “Girls don’t get those kind of scores,” the counselor said.

Despite a math teacher’s suggestion that she attend Harvard University “because they had a better class of men to marry,” she chose Brown, where she studied physics and Chinese and did not take a geology class until her senior year. She was transfixed, devouring the 900-page textbook in a week. Graduating with a B.A. in Chinese language and literature (she studied earthquake references in ancient Chinese texts), Jones went to MIT to get a doctorate in geophysics—one of just two women at the school pursuing an advanced degree in that subject. (And she found time to master the viola de gamba, a Baroque, cello-like instrument that she still plays today.) A few years after the 1975 Haicheng earthquake in Liaoning, China, an adviser said, “Why don’t you start studying foreshocks, and then if China ever opens up, we’ll be in a position to send you to go study there.” In February 1979, while still in grad school, Jones became one of the first U.S. scientists to enter China after Westerners were allowed in. She was 24.

So yeah, my jaw is on the floor, how about you?

For twenty years, she’s appeared on television, when given the opportunity by news networks and violent tectonic shifts, to explain earthquake risks, sometimes even cradling one of her young sons. About five years ago, however, she had to make the decision whether to continue to focus on research and maybe “write 30 more papers, of which five will be read and two will matter. And that would be doing pretty good.” Or, instead to go to work in the field of “hazard science,” and use her expertise and notoriety to help people prepare for the Big One (and many other small little ones). Says Jones: “I knew who would write those papers instead of me. It was a question of what mattered to me at that stage in my life. Did I want to get that one more level of academic achievement, or did I want to try and get the science used?”

She opted to get science used, serving as a science advisor for the United States Geological Survey by helping to create a national program for disaster preparedness.

“We have an irrational fear of earthquakes, partly because they create a feeling of being out of control,” she says. “We’re afraid of dying in them, even though the risk is extremely small. You’re almost undoubtedly going to live through it. And probably your house is going to be OK. It’s the aftermath that we need to prepare for.”

So all you nerds in LA: attach those high bookshelves to your walls, like all the Ikea instructions say to. Thanks. There’s a lot more fascinating stuff about earthquakes and Jones at the Smithsonian’s whole profile of her.

(story and picture from Smithsonian Magazine, via STEMinist.)

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Susana Polo
Susana Polo thought she'd get her Creative Writing degree from Oberlin, work a crap job, and fake it until she made it into comics. Instead she stumbled into a great job: founding and running this very website (she's Editor at Large now, very fancy). She's spoken at events like Geek Girl Con, New York Comic Con, and Comic Book City Con, wants to get a Batwoman tattoo and write a graphic novel, and one of her canine teeth is in backwards.

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