Vladimir Keilis-Borok - obituary - Telegraph So when he predicted in January 2004 that a quake measuring 6.4 or more on the Richter scale would strike before September 4 with an epicentre under the desert outside Los Angeles, people took it seriously. Local authorities were told to get their emergency plans up to date; residents in the areas at risk stockpiled water, non-perishable food, medicine, batteries and torches. The city of Palm Springs reported being "inundated with calls." Based on historical records, the quake had a less than 10 per cent chance of occurring in the specified period, and Keilis-Borok himself put the chances at only 50:50. But the commentators were not interested in such boring caveats. "By Labor Day, either southern California will have suffered a magnitude 6.4 earthquake or at least one UCLA geophysicist will be eating some serious crow," one local newspaper declared. September 4 came and went, causing some to suggest that Keilis-Borok had simply been lucky on the first two occasions. Many seismologists remain sceptical about the possibility of forecasting earthquakes with any reasonable degree of accuracy. Vladimir Keilis-Borok was born in Moscow on July 31 1921 to Jewish parents. His father was a merchant. When the Germans invaded Russia in 1941, Vladimir was sent to the front to install communication lines, a highly dangerous job . Luckily the Soviet authorities decided that his scientific talents might be better employed doing something less risky, and sent him to eastern Russia to prospect for oil. While there, Keilis-Borok developed his interest in geophysics. After the war he studied at the Russian Academy of Sciences, earning a doctorate in 1948. In the 1960s, during the Cold War, Keilis-Borok studied seismic waves from underground nuclear explosions and compared them with those of earthquakes, contributing his expertise to the 1963 US-Soviet arms control talks. At about the same time he started travelling to the West, and subsequently enjoyed spells as a visiting professor at universities in America and Italy. By the 1980s he had moved on to earthquake prediction theory and had founded a research institute in Moscow. In 1985 Keilis-Borok forecast that a quake would strike in the near future along the San Andreas Fault in California. The Soviets took this so seriously that, during a summit in Geneva that year, the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev mentioned it to President Ronald Reagan. The prediction appeared to be vindicated when, on October 17 1989, a major earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale interrupted a World Series baseball game at San Francisco's Candlestick Park, causing a motorway viaduct to collapse and leaving 63 people dead. Keilis-Borok's prediction led to the beginning of a long collaboration with American seismologists, and in 1998 he joined the University of California, Los Angeles. As well as earthquakes, Keilis-Borok applied his mathematical algorithms to other phenomena, including economic recessions, crime trends and presidential elections. Among other things, he co-authored a study of murder rates in Los Angeles and New York, concluding that surges in homicides could be forecast by sudden surges in assaults and burglaries and a simultaneous drop and then rise in robberies. He also had some success in political prognostications while working with Allan Lichtman, a professor of history at American University in Washington, DC. In 1981 they developed a formula for forecasting the presidential elections based on 13 criteria, including long-term economic outlook, the level of social unrest and foreign policy successes and failures - but not opinion polls. According to Lichtman, the formula has correctly predicted the outcome of every presidential election to date. Vladimir Keilis-Borok was twice widowed, and is survived by his daughter. Vladimir Keilis-Borok, born July 31 1921, died October 19 2013