Seth Stein

Their father was Jerome Leon Stein (1928–2013), a professor of economics at Brown University.

Seth Avram Stein (born July 12, 1953, in Middletown, Connecticut) is an American geophysicist with an international reputation for his research in plate tectonics, seismology, and space geodesy.

He has also done important work in public policy for coping with earthquake hazards.

Seth Stein's sister became a lawyer and his brother, Gil, became an archaeologist.

After graduating in 1975 with a B.S. in Earth and planetary sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), Seth Stein matriculated at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

There he graduated in geophysics with an M.S. in 1977 and an Ph.D. in 1978.

He was inspired by Keiiti Aki at M.I.T. and by Hiroo Kanamori at Caltech.

Stein's doctoral dissertation, supervised by Kanamori, is entitled ''I. Seismological study of the Ninetyeast and Chagos-Laccadive Ridges, Indian Ocean.

II.

Models for asymmetric and oblique spreading at midocean ridges.

III.

Attenuation studies using split normal modes''.

At Caltech, the three graduate students, Robert J. "Bob" Geller, Emile A. Okal, and Seth Stein often worked together and were called by other geophysicists "The Gang of Three".

As a postdoc from 1978 to 1979 Stein did research in geophysics at Stanford University.

At Northwestern University he was an assistant professor from 1979 to 1983, an associate professor from 1983 to 1987, and a full professor from 1987 until his retirement in 2023 as professor emeritus.

In 1982 in Manhattan he married Carol Ann Geller, whom he first met when he was a graduate student at Caltech.

She was one of the first women to receive a degree in geophysics from Caltech.

She became a professor of Earth and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the couple collaborated extensively in research on geophysics.

Seth and Carol Stein have also collaborated extensively in public education and outreach.

They, with 2 co-workers, developed an interpretive guide for a National Park Service journal and, with Abigail M. Foerstner, produced a YouTube video briefly explaining how the Midcontinent Rift controls the geology of the Lake Superior region.

In 1986 he was an associate editor for the Journal of Geophysical Research, as well as Geophysical Research Letters.

From 1986 to 1989 he was an editor for the Journal of Geophysical Research.

He was for the academic year 1993–1994 a visiting senior scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and from 1998 to 2000 the Scientific Director of the university NAVSTAR Consortium.

He was one of the organizers of EarthScope.

He served on many national and international scientific committees.

Seth Stein was a visiting professor in the Netherlands in 1998 and in Germany from 2013 to 2014.

He co-authored the 2003 textbook Introduction to seismology, earthquakes, and earth structure (which became widely used in undergraduate college courses in seismology) and the 2014 book Playing against nature: integrating science and economics to mitigate natural hazards in an uncertain world.

He also co-edited 6 other books.

The main theme of Stein's research is seismology with phenomena related to earthquakes.

He is the author or co-author of more than 200 scientific publications.

He and his collaborators did research on tectonic plate motions and how such motions cause earthquakes, as well as how to mitigate societal problems caused by earthquakes.

Early in his career at Northwestern University, he and another faculty member led a team of graduate students that developed NUVEL-1, a model providing new insights into plate motions.

This model helped to explain the geophysics of the San Andreas Fault and demonstrated that the Indian plate and the Australian plate are distinct.

Geophysicists routinely compared the NUVEL model with results from space-based geodesy to identify change in plate motion.

At Northwestern University, he held from 2006 to 2023 the Deering Professorship of Geological Sciences and chaired from 1989 to 1992 the Department of Geological Sciences.

During his academic career at Northwestern, he was the supervisor for 30 doctoral dissertation.

He completed a national tour as the 2006 IRIS/SSA (Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology/Seismological Society of America) Distinguished Lecturer, speaking on Giant earthquakes: why, where, when, and what we can do.

In 2008 he was a design consultant for the Field Museum of Natural History's Nature Unleashed: Inside Natural Disasters exhibit, which became in 2009 a touring exhibit (in the USA and Canada) seen, over a number of years, by more than 1.5 million people.

Seth Stein authored a 2010 book Disaster deferred: how new science is changing our view of earthquake hazards in the Midwest for a general audience.

From 2019 to 2021 he was president of the natural hazards section of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).