Aykut Barka was a Turkish earth scientist specialized in earthquake research.
Background
Barka was born in Fatih district of Istanbul in 1951 and received his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1981 from the University of Bristol, United Kingdom under the supervision of Doctor P.L. Hancock with a thesis on "Seismotectonic Aspects of the North Anatolian Fault Zone".
Education
He worked and studied geosciences in some top rated institutions around the world, including Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, École Normale Supérieure Paris, Massachusetts Institute of Technology"s Earth Resources Laboratory, Cambridge, Master of Arts, University of Bristol, United Kingdom and Geological Survey of Japan.
Career
He is best known for his contributions to understanding the behaviour of the North Anatolian Fault Zone (NAFZ), one of the most dangerous active faults in the world. In 1997, Barka published a paper with Ross Stein and James H. Dieterich of United States Geological Survey, titled "Progressive failure on the North Anatolian Fault since 1939 by earthquake stress triggering", which showed the migration of big earthquakes and, not surprisingly, positive stress accumulation in the Marmara Region. Only 2 years after this paper was published, the M7.4 1999 İzmit earthquake hit the Marmara Region, killing more than 17,000 people.
Aykut Barka died on February 1, 2002 from injuries suffered in a car accident five weeks earlier.
He left a wife and two young children.