Martha Savage
Martha Kane Savage is a New Zealand geologist and seismologist who is a full professor at Victoria University of Wellington. She completed her undergraduate studies at Swarthmore College and earned her PhD in 1987 from the University of Wisconsin–Madison for a thesis on the spectral properties of Hawaiian microearthquakes. She later joined Victoria University of Wellington, where she advanced to full professor.
Her research uses seismic waves to understand rocks deep beneath Earth’s surface. She focuses on seismic anisotropy to study plate tectonics, deep crustal properties, and volcanic activity, and she has developed new ways to interpret seismic data. She has also compared deep crustal processes in New Zealand and the western United States.
Savage has received several honors. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 2013 and a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 2015. In 2017 she was named in the Royal Society Te Apārangi’s "150 women in 150 words" series. She received the Marsden Medal in 2020 for pioneering work in seismology, plate tectonics, and volcanology, and for her service to science.
Her fieldwork includes winters at the South Pole, making her the second woman to winter over in Antarctica. Her Antarctic work included cosmic-ray observations at the Amundsen–Scott Station, and she has learned the importance of personal character and supportive relationships in science. She has served on many review panels, advisory and editorial boards, and has mentored numerous students.
In 2017 her son Kelly died after being restrained in a hospital in Japan, and she has since campaigned to end this practice.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 07:48 (CET).