A distinguished French geophysicist Albert Tarantola passed away on 6 December 2009 at the age of 60. Professor Tarantola was a Chair of the IUGG Commission on Mathematical Geophysics (1987–1992).
Born in Barcelona (Spain) he lived most of his life in Paris (France). Albert Tarantola obtained his PhD (Docteur de Spécialité) in 1976 from the University of Paris VI and the Doctor of Science (Docteur d'État) degree in 1981 from the same university. Tarantola was an author of about 100 scientific papers and the author of the well-known book on inverse problems in geophysics (Inverse Problem Theory: Methods for Data Fitting and Model Parameter Estimation, Elsevier, 1987). Tarantola was a leader of the Geophysical Tomography group of the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris that developed modern methods for the interpretation of waveform data. He taught at the University of Paris as well as at Beijing University, California Institute of Technology, Princeton University, and Stanford University. Tarantola received the Prize Antoine d'Abbadie of the French Academy of Sciences, Award Conrad Schlumberger of the European Association of Exploration Geophysics, and the Silver Medal (Médaille d'Argent) of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). He was elected fellow of the American Geophysical Union and Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Copenhagen.

“It is my feeling that seismology will one day provide detailed images of the Earth's crust, incommensurable to the gross pictures we obtain today. This will require new technology for data recording and new methods of data interpretation that will, possibly, take a dozen of years to develop” (A. Tarantola).