Nicholas Ambraseys

Nicholas Ambraseys (1929 to 2012) was a Greek engineering seismologist and one of the leading figures in earthquake engineering in Europe. He studied rural and surveying engineering in Athens and then civil engineering at Imperial College London, where his 1958 doctoral thesis on the seismic stability of earth dams formed the basis of what is now known as the sliding block method of analysing permanent displacement. He joined Imperial's staff in 1958, became professor of engineering seismology in 1974 and founded and first headed its Engineering Seismology Section. He published more than 300 works on earthquake hazard, strong-motion seismology and the seismic design of dams and foundations, helped found the Journal of Earthquake Engineering and the European Association for Earthquake Engineering, and gathered a vast body of historical earthquake records.