GEOLOGIST

Charles Francis Richter

1900 - 1985

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Charles Francis Richter (; April 26, 1900 – September 30, 1985) was an American seismologist and physicist. He is the namesake and one of the creators of the Richter scale, which, until the development of the moment magnitude scale in 1979, was widely used to quantify the size of earthquakes. Inspired by Kiyoo Wadati's 1928 paper on shallow and deep earthquakes, Richter first used the scale in 1935 after developing it in collaboration with Beno Gutenberg; both worked at the California Institute of Technology. Read more on Wikipedia

His biography is available in different languages on Wikipedia. Charles Francis Richter is the most popular geologist (up from 3rd in 2019), the 165th most popular biography from United States (up from 415th in 2019) and the most popular American Geologist.

Richter is most famous for the Richter magnitude scale, which quantifies the magnitude of an earthquake.

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Among GEOLOGISTS

Among geologists, Charles Francis Richter ranks 1 out of 90. After him are Alfred Wegener, Nicolas Steno, Milutin Milanković, Inge Lehmann, Charles Lyell, Friedrich Mohs, James Hutton, Mary Anning, Eduard Suess, Andrija Mohorovičić, and Francis Beaufort.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1900, Charles Francis Richter ranks 7. Before him are Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Heinrich Himmler, Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, Erich Fromm, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, and Martin Bormann. After him are Hans Adolf Krebs, Luis Buñuel, Wolfgang Pauli, Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, and Hans-Georg Gadamer. Among people deceased in 1985, Charles Francis Richter ranks 6. Before him are Marc Chagall, Enver Hoxha, Konstantin Chernenko, Yul Brynner, and Heinrich Böll. After him are Macfarlane Burnet, Orson Welles, Rodney Robert Porter, Italo Calvino, Fernand Braudel, and Carl Schmitt.

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In United States

Among people born in United States, Charles Francis Richter ranks 165 out of 20,380. Before him are Steven Seagal (1952), Kirk Douglas (1916), Tina Turner (1939), John Wayne (1907), George Washington Carver (1864), and Katharine Hepburn (1907). After him are William James (1842), John Steinbeck (1902), Richard Gere (1949), Carl Rogers (1902), Richard Feynman (1918), and Sheldon Lee Glashow (1932).

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Among GEOLOGISTS In United States

Among geologists born in United States, Charles Francis Richter ranks 1. After him are Walter Alvarez (1940), Harry Hammond Hess (1906), Barnum Brown (1873), Niles Eldredge (1943), James Hall (1811), Hugo Benioff (1899), M. King Hubbert (1903), Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden (1829), William Barton Rogers (1804), David A. Johnston (1949), and John Bell Hatcher (1861).

American born Geologists

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