George Plafker

George Plafker was an American geologist and seismologist who lived from 1929 to 2026 and worked for the United States Army Corps of Engineers, the United States Geological Survey and Chevron Corporation, best known for his research on the 1964 Alaska earthquake, from which he correctly concluded that the largest earthquakes result from fault slip at convergent plate boundaries at a time when plate tectonics theory was not yet widely accepted. He also studied subduction zone earthquakes and tsunamis in Chile during the late 1960s. He received the Harry Fielding Reid Medal of the Seismological Society of America in 2017. He received the Penrose Medal in 2017.