Walter H.F. Smith is a Geophysicist in NOAA's Laboratory for Satellite
Altimetry and a past Chair of the scientific and technical sub-committee of
GEBCO, the international and intergovernmental committee for the General
Bathymetric Charts of the Oceans. Smith earned a B.Sc. at the
University of Southern California, M.A., M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees at
Columbia University, and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Institute for
Geophysics and Planetary Physics of the Scripps Institution of
Oceanography before joining NOAA in 1992.
Dr. Smith has crossed the Pacific Ocean four times on oceanographic
vessels, twice serving as Co-Chief Scientist. According to ISI Web of
Science Citation Index, his papers are among the top 0.1% of papers in all
fields of science; he is the most cited author in volcanology, and his
papers applying altimetry to bathymetry and gravity have been cited more
than 1,600 times and 1,000 times, respectively. He has also published the first altimeter
measurements of tsunamis and hurricane-driven storm surge, as well as
papers on the thermal history of the Earth, the volcanic history of the
ocean basins, and the lubrication of plate tectonics. He is the co-founder
of the Generic Mapping Tools freeware
and was the Principal Investigator on "ABYSS", a four agency, twelve
university proposal for a new NASA mission to map the oceans. He is currently
a principal investigator on the CryoSat and GOCE missions, and has
served on various ICSU, NRC and AGU committees.
Walter talks about his research mapping the oceans with satellite altimetry:
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Walter H.F. Smith is a Geophysicist in NOAA's Laboratory for Satellite
Altimetry and a past Chair of the scientific and technical sub-committee of