Harry O. Wood

Harry O. Wood
Born	1879
Died	1958 (aged 78–79)
Nationality	American
Fields	Seismology
Institutions	University of California, Berkeley Hawaiian Volcano Observatory California Institute of Technology
Alma mater	Harvard University
Known for	Wood-Anderson seismometer

Harry Oscar Wood (1879 – 1958) was an American seismologist who made several significant contributions in the field of seismology in the early twentieth-century. Following the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, California, Wood expanded his background of geology and mineralogy and his career took a change of direction into the field of seismology. In the 1920s he co-developed the torsion seismometer, a device tuned to detect short-period seismic waves that are associated with local earthquakes. In 1931 Wood, along with another seismologist, redeveloped and updated the Mercalli Intensity Scale, a seismic scale that is still in use as a primary means of rating an earthquake's effects.

Wood was an instructor of geology and mineralogy at University of California, Berkeley from 1904 through 1912 and during that time taught the first course in seismology in the United States. He left California to operate the seismic station as a research associate at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory from 1912 to 1917, and while there prepared a report on the necessity for additional earthquake research in Southern California. During World War I he worked at the National Bureau of Standards developing a piezoelectric seismograph that was being tested to locate cannon fire. For the period 1919–1920 he was the acting associate secretary at the United States National Research Council and secretary of the recently established American Geophysical Union. During his time in Washington, D.C., he attracted the interest of the Carnegie Institution for Science and they would eventually employ Wood to establish a small seismic network that would ultimately grow into the Caltech Seismological Laboratory.

Coming from the state of Maine, Wood earned a bachelor's and master's degrees from Harvard University, then arrived in Berkeley in 1904 and began instructing in the University of California's geology department, which was being led by Andrew Lawson. Wood began his transition into seismology following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake when damage investigations were conducted in the city under Lawson's leadership. The state refused to allocate funds for their research for the California State Earthquake Investigation Commission and instead the commission was funded and published by the Carnegie Institution for Science (a sponsor of scientific research) in what would be known as the Lawson report, but no further seismological research was done under that alliance until much later.

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