Dear Natural Hazards community,


It is with great sadness that we report the sudden passing of the Editor-in-Chief Dr. Tad Murty. We lost a highly respected colleague and a very dear friend, who served as Editor-in-Chief for the journal Natural Hazards for almost 20 years. His death is a great loss for his family, friends, colleagues, students and the tsunami and ocean hazards community worldwide.


Dr. Tad Murty was born in southern India in 1937 and obtained his Bachelor in Physics at the prestigious Andhra University in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India. He was awarded a full scholarship to attend the renowned University of Chicago in the USA where he obtained his Master’s and PhD in Meteorology and Oceanography in 1962 and 1967, respectively.


Even though he was offered an appointment in the USA within NOAA, he decided quite soon thereafter to move to Canada where he worked at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada in a position as Senior Research Scientist for 27 years. Following his retirement in 1994, he was appointed as Professor of Earth Science at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. For a few years, he was also appointed as Director of the National Tide Center, Australia. Then, he moved back to Canada and worked for another 7 years as Senior Scientist with Baird and Associates in Ottawa until 2004. For the last 14 years, he was an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Ottawa, where he continued teaching graduate courses and was mentoring and supervising several graduate students. He has been a Visiting Scientist at the Beijing Institute of Technology and the Indian Institute of technology in New Delhi, India.


Tad was highly regarded and recognized internationally for his many achievements. As one of the world’s first researchers and leading authority on tsunami research, he is leaving a formidable legacy. During his career, he published 14 books, 248 journal publications and 355 conference articles. He was also the former president of the Tsunami Society.


Tad joined the journal Natural Hazard as member of the Advisory Editorial Board as from the start of the journal in 1988 and became Editor-in-Chief in 1999. With his relentless work ethics, Tad has been handling diligently hundreds of papers for the journal per year in a professional and timely way. He always reacted more or less in “real time”—which made him very popular within the Natural Hazards community. No doubt many of you got to know him as a straight forward, positive and fair person, being always to the point, and trying to get the best out of each paper. At the same time, he did also not avoid difficult decisions. He was a leading figure who pushed the journal forward to one of the top journals within the domain of natural hazards and risk research.


We will miss you Tad, and we will never forget your positive spirits—our thoughts are always with you and your family.


Editors-in-Chief and Publisher