J. Freeman Gilbert is a professor emeritus of geophysics in the Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics (IGPP) at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. An author of numerous research papers, book chapters, reviews, and other publications, Gilbert’s research interests include computational geophysics, the earth’s structure, and earthquake sources.

Born in Vincennes, IN, he attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and received a BS and PhD in geophysics. While at MIT he was a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow and a research associate. He was an assistant professor of geophysics at the University of California, Los Angeles, followed by two years as a senior research geophysicist at Geophysical Service Inc. in Dallas, TX. After joining Scripps, he held two Guggenheim Fellowships.

Gilbert was associate director of IGPP. He was chairman of Scripps’s graduate department.

He has served on several boards and committees, including the National Research Council and National Academy of Sciences’s Board on Earth Sciences and Resources, the IGPP external advisory committee, and the UC Santa Cruz Institute of Tectonics’s external advisory committee.

Gilbert received the Medal of the Seismological Society of America. He received an honorary doctor of engineering degree from the Colorado School of Mines. He won the Balzan Prize from the Fondazione Internazionale Premio E. Balzan in Milan, Italy. He was the recipient of the Council of the Geological Society of America’s Arthur L. Day Medal for outstanding contributions to geologic knowledge. He was awarded the Royal Astronomical Society’s Gold Medal.

He is a senior fellow of the San Diego Supercomputer Center, an honorary foreign fellow of the European Union of Geosciences, and a fellow of the Geological Society of America, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Geophysical Union, and the Explorer’s Club. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, and Sigma Xi. He also is a member of the Seismological Society of America, the Society of Exploration Geophysics, the American Mathematical Society, and the Royal Astronomical Society.

Last updated May 2004