Seismic waves and sources Ari Ben-Menahem and Sarva Jit Singh (Book review)

Abstract

In recent years several excellent books on the subject of theoretical seismology have appeared on the market. This might be seen as an indication that seismology has finally become a full grown branch of physics since its foundations were laid, theoretically and empirically, in the 19th century. One of these recent books, “Quantitative seismology” by Aki and Richards, appeared in 1980 and has become a standard reference already. The present book “Seismic waves and sources” by Ben-Menahem and Singh appeared in 1981, and it has a somewhat different and more limited scope than that by Aki and Richards. The book contains some 100 pages of appendices on various mathematical techniques applied in the main text, which makes the book rather self contained. The book is clearly written, and contains many references to the literature in the bibliographies at the end of each chapter. Unfortunately there are no references within the text to these bibliographies. The choice of subjects in the book is somewhat subjective and the emphasis is fully on the analytical treatment of the material; methods of a more numeric nature, like the reflectivity method, for the calculation of synthetic seismograms are not treated. This book will certainly become a classic and it should be recommended to anyone involved in seismological research.