Obituaries

Abstract

THE oldest seismologist in Italy, or indeed in the world, Prof. Giulio Grablovitz, died on Sept. 19. He was born at Trieste in 1846. Though without academic training, his fitness for geophysical studies was recognised by his appointment in 1885 as director of the geodynamic observatory of Casamicciola, founded as the result of the disastrous Ischian earthquakes of 1881 and 1883. At this observatory he remained for more than forty, years, until its suppression in 1926, furnishing it entirely with instruments of his own design, his horizontal pendulums, and his well-known geodynamic levels. He was also a member of the government commission which planned the geodynamic branch of the central meteorological office, and was one of the founders of the Italian Seismological Society.