The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that crippled the coasts of India and Sri Lanka took not only civilians but even the best of earth scientists, by surprise. The area was not known to have been affected by any such incident in the past.
Intrigued, seismologists Kusala Rajendran and her husband CP Rajendran arrived at Kaveripattinam, a coastal town in Tamil Nadu that was ravaged by the natural disaster.
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What is seismology? Seismology is one of the many subsets of earth science. While earth science encompasses any science that explains the composition of Earth and its atmosphere, seismology focuses on the activity of tectonic plates to understand how natural phenomena such as earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis work.
Predicting earthquakes is still something we cannot do, but by studying past and current earthquakes, scientists like Kusala builds models that are able to make calculated guesses about future seismic activity.
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What kind of research do seismologists do? The Rajendrans were in Kaveripattinam armed with an important clue. The clue lay in a 9th century Tamil poem called ‘Manimekalai’. The poem talked about the sea swallowing up the ancient port of Kaveripattinam in fury because the Chola king of the time missed celebrating a religious festival.
Kusala wondered if this incident may actually have occurred. If it did, it was likely a reference to a tsunami. Her team investigated the geology of the area and proved that there was indeed a tsunami that had struck the area 1,000 years ago.
Education
How did Kusala become a seismologist? As evident in the case of Kusala’s research, seismology today is a highly interdisciplinary field that is a mix of geology, geophysics, soil science, archaeology and even history. Kusala did her BSc in chemistry in a college in Thiruvananthapuram before moving to IIT Roorkee for her masters in applied geophysics. She did her PhD in seismology in University of South Carolina, USA, before returning to India.
With her husband, she spent the next years chasing earthquakes in Gujarat, Maharashtra and the Himalayas. Today she is part of the faculty at Indian Institute of Science’s Centre for Earth Sciences.
This is a fortnightly column highlighting the work of contemporary women in science.