About HWT

The trust is an active memorial to the work of Gerald W. (Jerry) Hohmann and Phillip (Phil) Wannamaker, both scientists and educators.

Through three decades, Gerald (Jerry) Hohmann was an international leader in the theory and application of electrical methods for the mapping and exploration of Earth’s crust. After obtaining his PhD in Engineering Geoscience from UC Berkeley in 1970, Jerry started his post-graduate career at Kennecott Copper Corporation, where he quickly became chief research geophysicist. In 1977, he joined the faculty of the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Utah, where he remained for the rest of his career. His research and teaching in industry and academia helped establish the modern field of applied geophysics. Jerry was an outstanding lecturer and teacher, who trained a new generation of geophysicists in the application of electrical methods in mineral, hydrocarbon, and geothermal exploration; in groundwater, geotechnical, and environmental studies; and in regional mapping of Earth’s shallow crust. His pioneering paper on 3D electromagnetic and induced polarization modeling, published in Geophysics in 1975, received the journal’s Best Paper award; that same year, and again in 1988, he received the award for Best Paper Presented at the SEG Annual Meeting (the 1988 award was for a paper on IP effects in 3D transient data). Jerry died tragically from cancer on May 23, 1992, at the age of 51. He was posthumously awarded SEG Honorary Membership at the Society’s 1992 Annual Meeting.

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Phil Wannamaker obtained his bachelor’s degree in Engineering Geology from Queen’s University Canada in 1976, where his foundational skills in tectonics, petrology, and structural geology were first honed. He obtained his doctorate in Geophysics from the University of Utah, under Gerald (Jerry) Hohmann in 1983, pivoting to 2D and 3D numerical modeling. His finite element 2D MT forward and inversion code was the first of its type, and generously made available for others to use. His knowledge of both 3D and 2D modeling led to seminal papers that contributed significantly to the understanding of electromagnetic fields in complicated geological structures. Phil was a key player in the groundbreaking EMSLAB experiment and a pioneer in Antarctic MT studies. His passion was the study of North American tectonics through the use of transect MT studies, particularly in the Basin and Range area. Through this work he showed the world how to make geological inferences from the electrical conductivity models that come out of the MT data, and contributed greatly to our understanding of North American tectonics and magmatic processes.

Originally established as the Gerald W. Hohmann Memorial Trust for Teaching and Research in Electromagnetic Geophysics in November 1992, the Trust raises funds through personal donations and special events that are reinvested into education and training in electrical and electromagnetic geophysics. The Trust supports dedicated projects:

  1. Undergraduate and graduate scholarships established through a matching fund program with the Society of Exploration Geophysics (SEG) Foundation

  2. Career Achievement Award established in recognition of outstanding contributions to the profession in the manner of Jerry Hohmann

  3. International Symposium on Three-Dimensional Electromagnetics (3DEM)

The trust was renamed and re-establshed as Hohmann Wannamaker Trust after Phil’s death in 2022.