52 Things You Should Know About Geophysics

by Matt Hall, Evan Bianco (Editor), Kara Turner (Editor)

There is something for every subsurface professional in these fifty-two short essays by more than three dozen petroleum geoscientists. The roster includes some of the most prolific geophysicists of our time, as well as some recently qualified scientists. The topics are even more diverse, ranging from anisotropic media to pre-stack interpretation, and from stories of early seismic workstations to career advice for the future.

Genres: Earth Sciences

134 pages, Paperback

First published May 24, 2012

About the author

Matt Hall has a PhD in sedimentology from the University of Manchester, UK, and 20 years' experience in the energy industry. He has worked for Landmark as a volume interpretation specialist, Statoil as an explorationist, and ConocoPhillips as a geophysical advisor. Matt has a broad range of interests, from signal processing to facies analysis, and from uncertainty modelling to knowledge sharing.

Reviews

[Cade]

This book would be more appropriately titled "52 Things Geophysicists Should Know." It is a book of 52 short essays with technical and non-technical career advice for practicing geophysicists.

[Daleo · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was interesting for me, but maybe not for the average reader. I studied geophysics in my undergrad days, though there was little hiring going on, as the price of oil tumbled at about that time. So, I ended up doing data analysis in different areas, though what I learned in physics/math/geophysics was very valuable (I added about a dozen formal stats courses later).

I only mention the above, to explain why I "got" a lot of what the essays were about in this book, namely seismic exploration for oil and natural gas. There were a lot of terms from those days that I recognized and understood, which would not necessarily hold interest for the average person i.e. different techniques to reduce raw seismic data and to interpret anomalies. There were also essays of more general interest, as well as some that would fit within the geology/geophysics crossover regime.

The essays are short and quite well written, so if you are curious about this subject, go for it.