This book, first published in 2000, is an introductory text on seismology intended for upper division undergraduates and graduate students. It emphasises fundamental concepts and basic mathematical developments, and is intended to be 'student friendly'. The author explains the fundamental concepts in full detail with step-by-step development of the mathematics, although the book does assume a knowledge of vector and tensor analysis, calculus and ordinary and partial differential equations, as well as of fundamental physics, especially mechanics and elasticity theory. Simple examples, such as one-dimensional problems and liquid media are used as introductory topics. The book covers most of the fundamental topics in seismology, including seismic wave propagation, normal mode theory, ray theory approximation, body and surface waves, source mechanisms, kinematic and dynamic models and applications to the understanding of the structure of the Earth and seismotectonics. The book also contains appendices on useful mathematical tools and includes extensive problems.

‘It contains everything I would want my graduate students to have as their initial core knowledge of seismology. Udías presents theoretical concepts in a crisp and complete manner … an excellent, broad overview of seismology.’

Toshiro Tanimoto Source: Physics Today

‘… an excellent introductory seismology text for advanced undergraduate and graduate students.’

Keith Priestley Source: Geological Magazine

‘ … a very good, student-friendly, textbook … it should be an absolute necessity on the bookshelves of seismologists for some time to come.’

G. F. Panza Source: Earth Science Reviews

‘… useful new volume which will be much appreciated by students and will serve as a model for all those involved in seismology teaching.’

Giancarlo Scalera - Annali di Geofisica

‘… a very instructive textbook with considerable attention to educational value … well and consistently organized, with numerous illustrations, which makes it very suitable as a textbook for introductory seismology courses.’

Hong Kie Thio Source: Pure and Applied Geophysics

'I do recommend this textbook for courses in seismology. The level of the book corresponds to upper division undergraduate and first year graduate students. It is a good introduction for more advanced books in seismology. Researchers will also find it useful to go back to the fundamental concepts.'

Source: Journal of Seismology