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CSEG interview

Leon Thomsen

Leon Thomsen attended the California Institute of Technology, "a small school in Los Angeles—800 students, 800 faculty," he jokes, with an outstanding geosciences program. Upon graduation in 1964, Thomsen went to Columbia University, and its associated Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory, from where he graduated in 1969.

Thomsen

His father before him was a geophysicist with Amoco, and his influence was the primary reason—albeit indirectly—that he entered geophysics, even though young Leon "could not imagine anything more boring than following in my father's footsteps." Other would beg to differ, since Erik Thomsen was a well-respected oil-finder who discovered bright spots for Amoco in the 1950s, long before it was known elsewhere in the industry. That discovery, however, was ignored within the company, because, says his son, "his job was to follow the recipe, not to think of new ideas." After Mobil invented bright spots, he became a local hero within Amoco which is why years later the company would even take a chance on hiring Leon, who lacked the standard qualifications.

Another poignant father-and-son link is that Leon's discovery of azimuthal anisotropy in P-AVO (more about it later), was observed in amplitude anomalies on the stack. "I thought that was an amazing extension of the work my father had done. That was an idea before its time, but my father's idea was well before its time. When he first had the idea about bright spots, he was exploring the onshore American Gulf Coast. In those days, they were exploring with dynamite, and they controlled the gain with a guy in a computing doghouse moving the rheostat with a practiced flip of his wrist. In those conditions of amplitude control, you can imagine why it was not considered important. Despite everything, my father saw there was a correlation between amplitude and eventual successful . . . [Full Text of this Article]