Pierre Saint-Amand

Internationally recognized geophysicist Pierre Saint-Amand died April 15, 2011, at the Stanford Medical Center in California. He was 91.

While attending college in Alaska Saint-Amand identified and named the Denali earthquake fault. He later went onto to study and document the 1962 Chilean earthquake and the Alaska earthquake in 1964. He was known for his study of the 1952 Tehachapi, California, USA earthquake.

Saint-Amand also formulated the Pacific Ocean basin rotation theory.

Later he helped establish the graduate school of Geology at the University of Santiago in Chile. This was done while he served a two year stint with the United States State Department.

During his 38 career as United States Navy scientist, Saint-Amand started work at the Naval Ordnance Test Station (NOTS) China Lake which later became China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station. As a navy scientist, Saint-Amand helped develop "Project Popcorn" which was a classified rain seeding program. The program created extra rain during monsoon season in southeast Asia which slowed down enemy soldiers from entering Vietnam. Project Popcorn was later declassified by the United States government.

Saint-Amand received the LTE Thompson Award during his China Lake career.