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File:Vanicek.jpg
Dr. Petr Vaníček

Petr Vaníček, Ph.D., D.Sc., PE (born 1935 in Sušice, Czechoslovakia, today in Czech Republic) is a Czech Canadian geodesist and theoretical geophysicist who had made important breakthroughs in theory of spectral analysis and geoid computation. He initiated the establishing of the Canadian Geophysical Union in 1974, and served as the Union's president between 1986 and 1988. In 1995, he founded GALOS, the United Nations Committee on the Geodetic Aspects of the Law of the Sea. For his achievements in science and research he received 1996 J. Tuzo Wilson Medal, the highest geophysics honor in Canada. He is a fellow of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics, of the American Geophysical Union, and of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU). He was the first Canadian awarded the Senior Distinguished Scientist Fellowship by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and was a Senior Visiting Scientist with the US National Academy of Sciences. Over the course of his career, he taught or performed research at universities and labs across six continents, including the Royal Institute of Technology and the USGS. His book Geodesy: the Concepts, now translated into several languages, is the standard text for both undergraduate and graduate courses in geodesy worldwide. He also served as Editor-in-Chief and a reviewer for several scientific journals as well as on numerous scientific boards and committees.

One of his main (of general relevance) contributions is the Vaníček spectral analysis, also called the Gauss-Vaníček spectral analysis or the Least squares spectral analysis, a frequency spectrum computation method published in 1969 and 1971. The method is based on least squares fit between data and trigonometric functions, and it is superior alternative to the Fourier analysis for analyzing long incomplete records such as most natural datasets. It has been used in many fields ranging from astronomy, geophysics, physics, microbiology, genetics and medicine, to mathematics and finance. His discoveries in theoretical geophysics, the Precise Geoid Solution in particular, enable millimetre-to-centimetre accuracy in geoid computation, an-order-of-magnitude improvement from previous solutions.

Since he was born into a typical bourgeois family, his wife and children requested to leave Communist Czechoslovakia during the brief but liberal times of Prague Spring. They were granted exit visa just before the Soviet invasion of 1968. The family reunited in England where he was staying on a 1967 Senior Research Fellowship at the University of Liverpool. Together, they immigrated to Canada in 1969. He married three times and has one daughter and two sons. He retired as Professor Emeritus in 2002, after more than thirty years of teaching at the University of Toronto and the University of New Brunswick. He lives in Fredericton, Canada.

See also

References

  1. Taylor J., Hamilton S. Some tests of the Vaníček method of spectral analysis, Astrophysics and Space Science, International Journal of Cosmic Physics, D. Reidel Publishing Co., Dordrecht, Holland (1972)
  2. ^ Omerbashich M. Gauss-Vanicek spectral analysis of the Sepkoski compendium: no new life cycles, Pages 26-30, Computing in Science & Engineering, Volume 8, Number 4, (July-August, 2006) ISSN 1521-9615
  3. Pagiatakis, S. Stochastic significance of peaks in the least-squares spectrum, J of Geodesy 73, p.67-78 (1999).
  4. Vaníček P. Approximate Spectral Analysis by Least-squares Fit, Astrophysics and Space Science, Pages 387-391, Volume 4 (1969)
  5. Vaníček P. Further development and properties of the spectral analysis by least-squares fit, Astrophysics and Space Science, Pages 10-33, Volume 12 (1971)
  6. Press et al. Numerical Recipes, 2nd Edition (2002)
  7. Omerbashich M. Earth-model discrimination method (pdf), pp.129, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of New Brunswick, Canada (2003)
  8. UNB Precise Geoid Determination Package, page accessed 02 October 2007
  9. Vaníček, P., Kleusberg, A. The Canadian geoid-Stokesian approach, Pages 86-98, Manuscripta Geodaetica, Volume 12, Number 2 (1987)
  10. Vaníček P., Martinec Z. Compilation of a precise regional geoid (pdf), Pages 119-128, Manuscripta Geodaetica, Volume 19 (1994)
  11. Vaníček et al. Compilation of a precise regional geoid (pdf), pp.45, Report for Geodetic Survey Division - DSS Contract: #23244-1-4405/01-SS, Ottawa (1995)

Sources

External links

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