{"id":25683,"date":"2025-04-09T18:45:09","date_gmt":"2025-04-09T18:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=25683"},"modified":"2025-04-09T19:28:15","modified_gmt":"2025-04-09T19:28:15","slug":"xavier-le-pichon-who-modeled-movement-of-earths-crust-dies-at-87","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=25683","title":{"rendered":"Xavier Le Pichon, Who Modeled Movement of Earth\u2019s Crust, Dies at 87"},"content":{"rendered":"
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With a computer rendering, he helped scientists understand that the earth, with its shifting tectonic plates, is \u201can extraordinary living being\u201d that is \u201ccontinuously changing.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Xavier Le Pichon, a French geophysicist whose pioneering model of the earth\u2019s tectonic plates helped revolutionize how scientists understand movements of the earth\u2019s crust, died on March 22 at his home in Sisteron, in the south of France. He was 87.<\/p>\n

His death was announced in a statement by the Coll\u00e8ge de France, France\u2019s highest educational institution, where Dr. Le Pichon was a professor emeritus and had held the chair of geodynamics.<\/p>\n

Interned in a Japanese concentration camp as a child, Dr. Le Pichon went on to forge a second career as a deep sea explorer and for a time worked with Mother Teresa in India. But it was in the field of geodynamics that he made his greatest contribution: creating, with a computer, a model of the earth\u2019s plates, which are constantly shifting ever so incrementally.<\/p>\n

In his formulation there are six such plates, accounting \u201cfor what is essential in tectonic manifestations at the earth\u2019s surface,\u201d as he said in 2002, when he won the Balzan Prize<\/a>, which is awarded in scientific fields not covered by the Nobel.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Plate tectonics, with its study of the earth\u2019s surfaces, is the \u201cframework\u201d for understanding earthquakes, volcanoes and the earth\u2019s long-term \u201cclimate stability,\u201d said David Bercovici<\/a>, a geophysicist at Yale; Dr. Le Pichon, he added, was one of the architects of that framework.<\/p>\n

Professor Bercovici called him, in an email, \u201cone of the giants in the plate tectonic revolution, especially in bringing the mathematical theory of it into practice as a truly predictive model of how the earth works.\u201d<\/p>\n

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With a computer rendering, he helped scientists understand that the earth, with its shifting tectonic plates, is \u201can extraordinary living being\u201d that is \u201ccontinuously changing.\u201dXavier Le Pichon, a French geophysicist whose pioneering model of the earth\u2019s tectonic plates helped revolutionize how scientists understand movements of the earth\u2019s crust, died on March 22 at his home in Sisteron, in the south of France. He was 87.His death was announced in a statement by the Coll\u00e8ge de France, France\u2019s highest educational institution, where Dr. Le Pichon was a professor emeritus and had held the chair of geodynamics.Interned in a Japanese concentration camp as a child, Dr. Le Pichon went on to forge a second career as a deep sea explorer and for a time worked with Mother Teresa in India. But it was in the field of geodynamics that he made his greatest contribution: creating, with a computer, a model of the earth\u2019s plates, which are constantly shifting ever so incrementally.In his formulation there are six such plates, accounting \u201cfor what is essential in tectonic manifestations at the earth\u2019s surface,\u201d as he said in 2002, when he won the Balzan Prize, which is awarded in scientific fields not covered by the Nobel.Plate tectonics, with its study of the earth\u2019s surfaces, is the \u201cframework\u201d for understanding earthquakes, volcanoes and the earth\u2019s long-term \u201cclimate stability,\u201d said David Bercovici, a geophysicist at Yale; Dr. Le Pichon, he added, was one of the architects of that framework.Professor Bercovici called him, in an email, \u201cone of the giants in the plate tectonic revolution, especially in bringing the mathematical theory of it into practice as a truly predictive model of how the earth works.\u201dWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25685,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25683"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25686,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25683\/revisions\/25686"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}