Gauss and Digital Signal Processing: Volume 3 "Scientist and Science" series - Softcover

Robinson, Enders Anthony

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1500879282 ISBN 13: 9781500879280

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014

Synopsis

Carl Frederick Gauss was one of the greatest scientists of all time. He was an exceptional mathematician as well as a calculating prodigy. He believed that mathematics is the queen of sciences and arithmetic is the queen of mathematics. Gauss did not shirk from numerical calculations. He used his skill in arithmetic to do the practical computations that determined the orbits of planets and comets. He came to believe his potential theory and his method of least squares provided vital links between science and nature. In later years, he collaborated with Wilhelm Weber on measurements of the Earth's magnetic field, and invented the first electric telegraph. In effect, the practical arithmetical labors of Gauss were early examples of digital signal processing. Today we are connected like never before. Our mobile phones and tablets are everywhere. These portable devices provide the means to connect us with the world around us. Digital signal processing (DSP) deconvolution chip power these devices. Deconvolution takes apart complicated signals encountered in practice. Re-convolution reassembles component parts into signals more amenable to our purposes. The following passage is from the 1953 film on MIT Project Whirlwind, Making Electrons Count. “The film which you are about to see first shows a few examples of the types of problems in which computers can be useful, and then describes the efforts of a typical user in programming a problem for Whirlwind. Whirlwind has been involved in more than a hundred such computations problems, originating in many different departments of MIT. Take the Geology Department, for example. Seismic methods of prospecting for oil may seem a little strange to the onlooker. A charge is exploded at one point, and the sound, reflected from various underground layers of rock, is recorded at a number of other points. A great deal of information about underground formations can be determined from these sound patterns, but only after long and tedious computations have been performed on them.” The chapters are 1. Overview of the seismic method; 2. Seismic models; 3. Seismic migration; 4. Wave motion; 5. Hamilton’s equations and seismic modeling; 6. Predictive deconvolution; 7. Seismic waves; 8. Ghost reflections; 9. Fourier series and Fourier transform; and 10. Gauss and Maxwell’s equations.

About this title

About the Author

Enders Anthony Robinson is the Professor Emeritus of Geophysics in the Maurice Ewing and J. Lamar Worzel Chair at Columbia University in City of New York. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts on March 18, 1930. He received from MIT a SB in mathematics in 1950, a SM in economics in 1952 and a PhD in geophysics in 1954. In 1950 vast areas of the world, including great sedimentary basins and nearly all water-covered regions, were impervious to oil exploration because of intrinsic limitations in analog methods. In 1950-1954 Robinson at MIT, as a research assistant in mathematics and a research associate in geophysics, was the first to apply the methods of digital signal processing to the seismic records used in oil exploration. He used the Whirlwind digital computer at MIT and the Ferranti digital computer at the University of Toronto. His PhD thesis introduced the digital concept of deconvolution, which was successful in opening up every area of the world to oil exploration. The deconvolution process removed the unwanted reverberations that obscured the desired primary reflections. Robinson is a member of the National Academy of Engineering of the United States and a fellow of the European Academy of Sciences. In 2001, Robinson received the Maurice Ewing Gold Medal from the Society of Exploration Geophysicists with the citation, “For a lifetime of remarkable achievements that began while he was in MIT graduate school, when he in essence invented the field of digital seismic data processing. The progress in our science over the last 50 years in large part has evolved from the work of Enders Robinson.” In 2003, the European Academy of Sciences awarded Robinson the Blaise Pascal Medal for Science and Technology as “the father of digital geophysics.” In 2005, the International Astronomical Union, which acts as the internationally recognized authority for assigning designations to celestial bodies, named the asteroid Svenders with the citation, “In 1952 Enders Robinson became the first ever to perform signal processing on a digital computer.” In 2010, the European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers awarded the Desiderius Erasmus Award to Robinson with the citation, "His early research laid the groundwork for seismic deconvolution and the widespread use of geophysical digital filters in general. Universally recognized as an eminent scientist, Dr. Robinson has aptly been described as one of the living legends of exploration geophysics.”

Edition details

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1500879282
• ISBN 13: 9781500879280
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 212