Jerry p. Eaton, the legendary pioneer of telemetered seismic networks for monitoring volcanoes a active earthquake faults, died 2 April 2004 after a long battle with cancer. His friends and colleagues knew Jerry as a dedicated scientist and resourceful inventor who was unfailingly generous in providing help and encouragement to younger scientists.⇓ ![][1] Jerry's impact on seismology, volcanology, and the programs of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) was enormous. More than anyone else, his pioneering vision of instrumental networks advanced microearthquake seismology to the forefront in studies of earthquake tectonics and volcanology. Through his reading knowledge of French, German, Russian, and Spanish, he was familiar with seismological research published in these languages as well as that published in English. His knowledge of early seismology papers was encyclopedic, and he could recall details of observations he had made a half-century ago. Less than a week before his death, he was at his workstation in his office at the USGS, Menlo Park, timing earthquakes, as he had done virtually every day since his retirement in 1995. Jerry was born on 11 December 1926 on a Central Valley farm near Fresno, California. When Jerry was about five years old, his father responded to the bad economic times by building a well rig from salvaged materials and moving it and his family to Woodland, near Sacramento, where he eked out a living drilling water wells. Jerry's mother, a former school teacher, was the bookkeeper for the business. On occasion, Jerry would tell his colleagues of his early life in the farming area, a time when he and his brothers learned to be self-reliant in solving problems as they arose. Jerry attended the University of California at Berkeley, earning a B.A. with honors in physics (1949) and a Ph.D. in geophysics (1953). An early indication … [1]: /embed/graphic-1.gif