Benjamin Schwarz from the GFZ section Near-surface Geophysics was awarded the Karl Zoeppritz Prize 2019 at the annual conference of the German Geophysical Society (Deutsche Geophysikalische Gesellschaft DGG) in Braunschweig on March 4.

The prize is awarded for "outstanding achievements of young scientists". Benjamin Schwarz receives it for his "important contribution to improving the processing and presentation of seismic reflection data", as the commission for honours of the DGG writes in its explanatory statement. The prize is endowed with 1000 Euro.

Benjamin Schwarz moved from Oxford University, UK, to the GFZ in October 2018, funded by a Return Fellowship of the German Research Foundation DFG. The young geophysicist develops and uses mathematical and physical techniques in order to obtain information from seismic measurements that is difficult to access and to make it usable for imaging the subsurface. Furthermore, his work has helped to unify existing methods.

The Karl Zoeppritz Prize has been awarded by the DGG since 2003, usually every two years. Karl Zoeppritz (1881-1908) was a Göttingen seismologist at the beginning of the 20th century who investigated the behaviour of seismic waves at interfaces and developed the Zoeppritz equations named after him. (ph)

More information:

• Karl Zoeppritz Prize of the German Geophysical Society