Dr. Atilla Aydin was born on August 4, 1944, in the village of Yoncali, in eastern Turkey. He started his career in Istanbul where he moved to attend high school. In 1968, Atilla graduated from geological engineering at Istanbul Technical University. He then moved to North America, where he received his M.Sc. (1974) and Ph.D. (1978) in geology with Professor Arvid Johnson from Stanford University.
Following his studies at Stanford, Atilla’s career took him to many corners of the world. Between 1978 and 1982, Atilla taught at Istanbul Technical University, acted as a visiting scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, and finally returned to Stanford on a post-doctoral fellowship. In 1987, he obtained tenure at Purdue university as a Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Atilla returned to Stanford in 1991, where he taught until his retirement in 2015.
In 2020, Atilla took the lead and assembled a team to prepare an exceptional Groundwater Project book: Fractures and Faults in Sandstone and Sandstone-Shale/Mudstone Sequences and Their Impact on Groundwater. This book focuses on the structural relationships between various fracture types such as deformation bands, joints, and large faults, which have a wide range of physical properties. The properties most relevant to groundwater science such as permeability, porosity, as well as fracture length and frequency (density), are explored in this book.
Atilla contributed to a wide body of research over his career – found here – and we are grateful for his work on this exceptional Groundwater Project book which allows his wisdom to be shared globally for generations to come.
Additionally, the authors sat down to discuss the various elements of this book with The Groundwater Project, watch the full interview below.
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