Part of the enduring fame of architect Frank Lloyd Wright stems from his having designed the old Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. His reputation was significantly enhanced when the Imperial Hotel, shortly after its 1923 opening, withstood the 7.9-magnitude earthquake that devastated Tokyo and Yokohama. Wright's grandson Thomas, currently in Japan, shows an interesting offshoot link with his grandfather. He is a geologist, a visiting professor at the University of Tokyo Earthquake Research Institute. He took his Ph.D. in igneous petrology from Johns Hopkins University, but then moved into volcanology. "That move," he said, "was a career-defining experience."

Although he comes from an illustrious family headed by his grandfather -- with film star Anne Baxter a cousin, and other relatives acclaimed architects -- Wright says he does not "advertise the fact." He does not need to, as the life he made for himself is his own champion. "But," he said, "I find that my grandfather was so revered in Japan that his fame spills over onto me."

Wright took his first degree in geology from Pomona College in 1957. "I am terrible as an artist," he said. "Architecture was the last thing I wanted to do." With his doctorate four years later, he joined the U.S. Geological Survey in Washington, D.C. He said: "The job, compiling data on occurrence of trace elements for a project, was not my primary interest, but it put me close to the petrologists I wanted to work with. Then I was approached about going to Hawaii to work with the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. I spent much of my first tour drilling a pond of lava erupted into a pit crater."