Anthony Qamar papers, circa 1960s-2007

Anthony Qamar (1943-2005) was a research professor of geophysics in the University of Washington Department of Earth and Space Sciences. He also served as the Washington State Seismologist.

Dr. Qamar was born in Redding, California in 1943. He earned his PhD in geophysics from the University of California Berkeley, then joined the faculty of the Department of Geology at the University of Montana. In 1980, while working at the University of Montana, Dr. Qamar set up portable seismic and heat-monitoring instruments around Mount St. Helens as the volcano was building toward its May 18 eruption. Qamar joined the University of Washington in 1983 as a research associate professor, where he also served as the Washington state seismologist, advising the government on earthquake safety issues, and as co-principal investigator for the Pacific Northwest Seismograph Network. Qamar was also an avid mountaineer credited with several first ascents, a skill he frequently brought to his research field work. Anthony Qamar and his colleague Dr. Daniel Johnson of the University of Puget Sound were fatally injured by a logging truck's lost load on October 4, 2005 while driving to the Olympic Peninsula to retrieve research instrumentation.