Tributes to Bruce Bolt

Ali A. Nowroozi

I was shocked, very sad, and depressed when I saw the passing away of Professor Bolt on Seismographic Stations website. After remaining motionless for a while, memories came to my thoughts from the days I was his student at Berkeley to a few weeks ago when I had a call from him at Norfolk. I knew him for duration of over four decades. After all, he was my mentor, thesis advisor and support during my professional work. Surely I had lost his good advice for rest of my life and that was a great loss. I prayed for him and wished God give solace to his family and bless his soul.

He came to Berkeley in 1963, at that time, under Professor Byerly; I had received my M.A. degree in geophysics and was working on spectra of Rayleigh waves on my own. The Alaskan Good Friday earthquake of 1964 occurred and he suggested that I work out eigen-vibrations of this event for my Ph D thesis. During two years that I was in contact with him, I developed a very high respect for him. He was knowledgeable in many fields and an excellent professor. He was very good applied mathematician, statistician and theoretical physicist. He shared his vast knowledge with his students in the classroom.

I still remember, during a class on free oscillations of earth, he brought an old record player and a crystal glass to class and tried to demonstrate the modal splitting of earth vibrations by variation of sounds of the vibrating glass under rotation. He also was a practical man. He asked another student to construct a three- dimensional model of aftershock sequence in Hollister area. The Monday morning meeting of the staff of seismographic stations was very interesting. He set the goals for the next meeting and asked for the progress of each task. I remember in one of this meeting I was in charge of producing the next Bulletin of the Seismographic Stations. He asked me to include the calibration curves for all stations. In the next meting he asked me how much I have progressed, I told him some of the seismometers do not have calibration curves, he simply said build one. The work was completed with some help from Walter Marion by the time of next meeting.

Professor Bolt had many accomplishments in seismology and seismic safety not only in California and United States but also, across the whole globe. In fact he pushed the envelope of seismic safety farther by teaching, publishing, and traveling. When I was at Berkeley, there were students from Iran, India, of course many Americans and post Dr fellows from Europe, Japan and South America. His judgments and advice was asked by governments and consulting engineers all over the world. He visited many seismic prone areas of the earth himself or send his students; just a few weeks before his passing the way, he was back from Turkey; he had visited Iran for some engineering projects during the previous regime. He was interested not only in seismic safety, but also in the culture, history and political situation in the areas he visited. I know this first hand; I had the honor to be his host in Iran and Norfolk, in Iran he wanted to see the Bazaar and in Norfolk he wanted to see the Memorial to General Mc Arthur.

Student at Berkeley are very fortunate to have the most distinguished faculty in the world, I was among them, some of my famous professors have passed the way I miss them all. However, Professor Bolt was my mentor, certainly I will miss him greatly and my sympathy and prays go out to Beverly Bolt and the rest of his family children and grand children. Dr Bolt was interested in poetry and once upon a while he started his class with a poem. In this sad time I take solace to quote a translation of a poem by a famous Persian poet named Hafiz. He had lost a loved one.

"With much heart-blood a nightingale got a rose,
But the angry wind caused the thorns to oppose.
A parrot dreaming of sugar, was really gay,
When flood of death carried it away.
I wish the friend would understand my strife
He came easy, but difficult made my life.
O Camel- man, for God's sake help me on,
The hope of help led me to this caravan.
Don't forget my wet eyes and dusty face,
Therein, the blue dome made its home of grace.
Alas the jealous moon of the blue sky,
Will make my sage in grave to lie.
Hafiz, you die and can't enjoy his face,
The Time's foul play deprived you of his grace."

The attached photo was taken on 30 of May 1964, less than a year after he joined Berkeley Faculty and was Director of Seismographic Stations. From left to right, they are: Mansour Niazi, the last student of Professor Byerly, Father Agustin Udias, a post doctoral fellow from Saint Louis Professor Bolt. Thomas Turcotte and Ali A. Nowroozi, his first and second Ph D students at Berkeley. Takashi Mikumo also was a postdoctoral fellow from Japan.

Bruce Bolt | Tributes |

Berkeley Seismological Lab
215 McCone Hall, UC Berkeley
Berkeley CA 94720-4760
www@seismo.berkeley.edu