---
title: "Kenneth Hsu"
chunk: 3/6
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Hsu"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:06:31.108462+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

== Career timeline ==
1944-48 Bachelor of Science in geology, Nanjing University, China.
1948-50 M.A. degree in geology, Ohio State University, USA.
1950-53 Doctorate in geology and geophysics, University of California at Los Angeles, USA.
1954-63 Research geologist and research associate, Shell Development Corporation, Houston, Texas, USA.
1963-64 Associate professor, State University of New York at Binhamton, USA.
1964-67 Associate professor, University of California at Riverside, USA.
1967-94 Professor, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETHZ), Zurich, Switzerland.
1994 Chief executive, Tarim Associates for Mineral & Oil Exploration AG, Switzerland.
1999 Chief executive, Fengshui Water Technology Limited, Lichtenstein.
2003 Chief executive and chairman of the board, Tarim Resource Recycling Limited, UK.
2005 President, Kenneth Hsu Corporation of Integrated Hydrologic Circuit Technology & Development, Beijing, China.
2007 Chief executive, Lazarus Oil International, UK.
2007 Director, Kenneth Hsu Consulting, UK.
2007 Chief engineer and senior advisor, Institute for IHC Development, National Institute Of Earth Sciences, Beijing, China.
2007 Director, Center for Environmental & Health Engineering, Henan University, Kaifeng, China.

== Notable writings ==
Hsu authored or edited over 20 books, many in multiple languages, and was elected an International Writer of the Year by the International Book Club (Cambridge, UK) in 2003.
The Mediterranean Was A Desert, 1982
The book concerned Hsu's work deciphering the Messinian Salinity Crisis and provided a first-hand account of one of the most significant deep-sea drilling cruises ever launched. The voyage, Leg 13 of the D/V Glomar Challenger, was undertaken in 1970 and led to the hypothesis that 5.5 million years ago, the Mediterranean was a desert. It documented the adventures of the oceanographic expedition and offered portraits of 'big' science and 'big' scientists at work, with human touches, as a memoir for historians of science. The book was selected by Philip Morrison of Scientific American as one of the 100 most significant and influential books of science in the 20th century. A film was also made by PBS, based on the book.
Challenger At Sea, 1983
The book was an overview of the then current state of marine geology and a source book for the history of that science, and was used as a geology textbook for non-majors.
The Great Dying, 1986
The book described the circumstances leading to the discovery that the dinosaur extinction was triggered by a cometary impact. An inquiry into the nature of survival and extinction, it was published in 6 languages, selling over 170,000 copies worldwide, selling 28,000 copies in the United States between 1986 and 1988; 100,000 copies in mainland China in 1989 and 40,000 copies in Taiwan. A popular newspaper in Taipei United Post featured The Great Dying in its weekly list of best-selling books list for more than a year, and it was chosen as a top non-fiction book of the year in August 1992. Originally intended to teach the public, the book was used as a textbook in the United States for its scientific method. A film was also made based on the book by ZDF.
In the book, Hsu marshalled "some of the most gripping and controversial geological discoveries of our time to blast Darwin’s claim and to shake the foundations of his evolutionary theory," showing evidence indicating a meteor collided with the Earth, 66 million years ago, leaving much of it uninhabitable, and warning that a similar event may threaten humanity in the future.
Hsu criticized Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. According to Hsu "If most extinctions are caused by catastrophes... then chance, not superiority, presides over who shall live and who shall die. Indeed, the whole course of evolution may be governed by chance, and not reflect at all the slow march from inferior to superior forms so beloved by Victorians, and so deeply embedded in Western thought." The book endorses catastrophism and non-Darwinian evolution.
Klima Macht Geschichte, 2000
Klima Macht Geschichte presented a theory of climate and history, looking at future climate changes based on historical, archaeological and helio-biological evidence. It made the prediction of global cooling of the planet in the last decades of the 21st century, and the coming of a little ice age before 2500. The claim forecast was corroborated by scientists Khabibullo Abdusamatov, Yuk Yung, John Cassey, Nigel Calder, Henrik Svensmark, Alexander Chizhevsky and John D. Hamaker [5]. Orell Fussli Verlag [6] Archived 2005-10-01 at the Wayback Machine published the book after an article about Hsu appeared in Bilanz Magazine [7] in 1998. Earlier, in 1992, Hsu wrote in Geographical Magazine, "Perhaps our species was created by Gaia to prevent a catastrophic chill" in reference to his published paper 'Is Gaia Endothermic?, on which the book is also based.
Amadeus & Magdalena, 2002
Published in Chinese, English and German, with a Chinese translation titled "莫扎特的愛與死"., the book presented Hsu's musicological theory about the death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

== Works ==
A complete list of books by Kenneth Hsu is available at the Kenneth J. Hsu Official Site.

=== Amadeus & Magdalena ===
2002, Amadeus & Magdalena: A Love Story. Distributed through Master Classics (UK). English.
2002, Amadeus & Magdalena: A Love Story. German.
2002, Amadeus & Magdalena: A Love Story. Taipei: Commonwealth Publishers, 218pp. Chinese.

=== Challenger At Sea ===
1982, Ein Schiff revolutioniert die Wissenschaft. Hamburg,: Hoffmann & Campe Verlag, 304 pp. German.
1985, Ein Schiff revolutioniert die Wissenschaft, Beijing: Geology Publishing House, 175 pp. German.
1994, Challenger at Sea: A Ship that Revolutionized Earth Science, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 416 pp. Hardback. English.
1994, Challenger at Sea: A Ship that Revolutionized Earth Science, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 418 pp. Paperback edition. English.
1994, Challenger at Sea: A Ship that Revolutionized Earth Science, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 418 pp. Revised edition. English.
1999, Challenger at Sea: A Ship that Revolutionized Earth Science, Tokyo: Tokai University Press, Tokyo, 483 pp. Japanese.