Yoshio Fukao Dr. Yoshio Fukao earned a B.S., M.S. and D.S. in 1966, 1968 and 1971 from the Geophysical Institute, University of Tokyo, respectively. After he received his D.S., he spent 22 years at the Department of Earth Sciences, Nagoya University. In 1993 he moved to the Earthquake Research Institute, University of Tokyo, where he served as the director from 1993 to 1997. He also acted as the president of the Seismological Society of Japan in 1991-1995.
After he finished his M.S. in mineral physics, he begin work in broad areas of modern seismology, especially in earthquake source processes, physics of the EarthÕs crust and mantle and global tomography, with its implications for the role of subducted slabs in geodynamics.
He contributed to understanding mechanism of deep earthquakes through detailed analyses of seismic body waves, understanding subduction tectonics by detecting anomalous earthquakes occurring near deep-sea trenches and anomalous seismic waves trapped in the subducted oceanic crust, understanding the transitional structure within the mantle by analyzing seismic body waves and free oscillations of the Earth, and understanding the deep circulation of subducted pates through the tomographic inversion of seismic data. His interest now extends to the detection of very weak signal of the EarthÕs free oscillations excited by other than earthquakes. He is the leader of the ongoing project to deploy a geophysical network (Ocean Hemisphere Network) in the western Pacific to ÒseeÓ directly the EarthÕs interior through the ocean bottom.
For his outstanding research accomplishments in these areas, he received the Imperial Award and the Japan Academy Prize in 1995, and was named Fellow of the AGU (American Geophysical Union) in 1997.