Formative Experience

When WHOI geophysicist Jian Lin was a high school student in China, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck the city of Tangshan, killing 250,000 people. The event inspired Lin to study earthquakes and to find way to mitigate their dangers. Lin spoke at a recent WHOI-sponsored public event, on Japan’s Triple Disaster, the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that damaged the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant. He presented an assessment of earthquake and tsunami threats in the U.S.(Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)