Kate Hutton

Kate Hutton, nicknamed the Earthquake Lady, Dr. Kate, or Earthquake Kate was a staff seismologist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, where she monitored Southern California's earthquake activity for 37 years.While Hutton was growing up, her family lived in several states and spent six years in Taiwan. She was interested in all kinds of natural sciences. She decided to stay in the fields of math and science.Hutton received a B.S. in astronomy from Pennsylvania State University in 1971, and an M.S. (1973) and Ph.D. (1976) in astronomy from the University of Maryland, College Park. She has worked for the Caltech earthquake center as a seismologist her entire career since the 1970s. After graduation, Hutton says she found astronomy jobs scarce, so switched careers. She sees the two professions as similar: "Earth is a planet, after all, so it's sort of a matter of looking down rather than looking up." Most of her job is consumed by bureaucracy and data analysis, but immediately following a major earthquake, especially in Southern California, Hutton is sought by the media for her professional commentary. Her local celebrity is such that people take note of her shopping, whether she is replacing glassware or stocking up.Hutton works on a project to improve the consistency of the “earthquake catalog”, which is our list of over 400,000 southern California quakes recorded since 1932. Better consistency means better statistics, which help to estimate earthquake risk. Hutton sometimes appears with her United States Geological Survey colleague "Dr. Lucy" Jones, who has been appearing on television since the 1980s. According to LA Weekly, "Hutton strikes just the right balance between calm and caution" in explaining earthquake science to viewers.Hutton has been an out lesbian since 1984, and is often listed as a "lesbian icon". She gave a tour for the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Scientists group and ended up dating the tour group's leader that year