James Freeman Gilbert
- Category : 1931-births
- Type : PSE
- Profile : 4/6 - Opportunistic / Role Model
- Definition : Single
- Incarnation Cross : RAX The Sphinx 3
Biography
American geophysicist, best known for his work with George E. Backus on inverting geophysical data, and also for his role in establishing an international network of long-period seismometers.
Gilbert's undergraduate and graduate degrees were earned from MIT (B.S., 1953, and Ph.D. in geophysics, 1956), and he continued at MIT as a postdoctoral fellow until 1957, when he moved to the University of California, Los Angeles. At UCLA he was an assistant, then associate, professor, but left to take an appointment as a senior researcher at Texas Instruments. In 1961, he was recruited by Walter Munk to the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics (IGPP) at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, also becoming a professor of Geophysics at the University of California, San Diego. He remained at UCSD through the remainder of his career, and became an Emeritus Professor.
In his later years, Gilbert enjoyed extensive world travel with his wife, Sally Gilbert. He died due to complications resulting from a car accident in Southern Oregon on 15 August 2014, aged 83.