William Lowrie

Like all the books in the Very Short Introductions series I've come across so far, this one does pretty much exactly what it says on the tin, taking you through all the main concepts and techniques of the subject at a brisk pace, in a way that anyone with a reasonably solid recollection of school science lessons should be able to follow. After a short introduction to establish a context for the Earth in astrophysics and the solar system, Lowrie focuses in turn on each of the main types of physical measurements geophysicists use — seismometry, gravimetry, magnetometry, etc. — and explains how those measurements have given us particular types of information about the structure and behaviour of the planet. He also talks a little about the kind of things we don't know yet — e.g. when the next earthquake will be — and about the way that geophysics has been a classic example of a field where techniques developed for "applied science" — e.g. for civil engineering, commercial prospecting, military intelligence-gathering — have led to some of the biggest "fundamental" discoveries about the nature of the planet we live on.… (mais)