02-09-2019, 01:07 PM
oceanographer of the Greatest Generation
Walter Heinrich Munk (October 19, 1917 – February 8, 2019) was an American physical oceanographer.[1] He was a professor of geophysics emeritus and held the Secretary of the Navy/Chief of Naval Operations Oceanography Chair at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.
Munk was born in 1917 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, to a Jewish family.[2] He was sent to a boys' preparatory school in upper New York state in 1932.[3][4] The family selected New York because they envisioned a career in finance for Munk in a New York bank with connections to the family business. His father, Dr. Hans Munk, and his mother, Rega Brunner, divorced when Munk was a child. His maternal grandfather was a prominent banker and Austrian politician, Lucian Brunner (1850–1914). His stepfather, Dr. Rudolf Engelsberg, was briefly a member of the Austrian government of President Engelbert Dollfuss.[5]
Munk worked at the firm for three years and studied at Columbia University. He hated banking, and left the firm to attend the California Institute of Technology, where he earned a B.S. (1939) in physics. He applied for a summer job at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.[5] The next year the director of Scripps, the distinguished Norwegian oceanographer Harald Ulrik Sverdrup, accepted him as a doctoral student, but told Munk that he did "not know of a single job in oceanography which would become available in the next decade".
Munk completed an M.S. in geophysics at the California Institute of Technology [6] in 1940 and a PhD in oceanography from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1947. After graduation, Scripps hired him as an assistant professor of geophysics. He became a full professor there in 1954.
In 1968 Munk became a member of JASON, a panel of scientists who advise the U.S. government.
On June 20, 1953, Munk married Judith Horton. She was an active participant at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography for decades, where she made major contributions to architecture, campus planning, and the renovation and reuse of historical buildings. She and Walter were frequent traveling companions. Judith Munk died on May 19, 2006. Munk married La Jolla community leader Mary Coakley in June 2011. He turned 100 in October 2017.[7]
Munk applied for American citizenship in 1939 after the Anschluss and enlisted in the ski troops of the U.S. Army as a private. This was unusual as all the other young men at Scripps joined the U.S. Naval Reserve. Munk was eventually excused from military service to undertake defense-related research at Scripps. He joined several of his colleagues from Scripps at the U.S. Navy Radio and Sound Laboratory, where they developed methods related to amphibious warfare. Their methods were used successfully to predict surf conditions for Allied landings in North Africa, the Pacific theater of war, and on D-Day during the Normandy invasion.[5][8] Munk commented in 2009, "The Normandy landing is famous because weather conditions were very poor and you may not realize it was postponed by General Eisenhower for 24 hours because of the prevailing wave conditions. And then he did decide, in spite of the fact that conditions were not favorable, it would be better to go in than lose the surprise element, which would have been lost if they waited for the next tidal cycle [in] two weeks."[9]
Returning to Scripps from a sabbatical at Cambridge University in England, in 1956 Munk developed plans for a La Jolla branch of the Institute of Geophysics, then a part of the University of California, Los Angeles. With the new branch of IGP, an institution of the wider University of California system, to be focused on planetary physics with an emphasis on the Earth-Moon system, IGP changed its name to the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, IGPP. IGPP at La Jolla was built between 1959–1963 with funding from the University of California, the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the National Science Foundation, and private foundations, [10] [11] The redwood building was designed by architect Lloyd Ruocco, in close consultation with Judith and Walter Munk. The IGPP buildings have become the center of the Scripps campus. Among the early faculty appointments were Carl Eckart, George Backus, Freeman Gilbert and John Miles. The eminent geophysicist Sir Edward "Teddy" Bullard was a regular visitor to IGPP. In 1971 an endowment of $600,000 was established by Cecil Green to support visiting scholars, now known as Green Scholars. Munk served as director of IGPP/LJ from 1963–1982.
In the late 1980s, plans for an expansion of IGPP were developed by Judith and Walter Munk, and Sharyn and John Orcutt, in consultation with a local architect, Fred Liebhardt. The Revelle Laboratory was completed in 1993. At this time the original IGPP building was renamed the Walter and Judith Munk Laboratory for Geophysics. In 1994 the Scripps branch of IGPP was renamed the Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics.
Munk was the first to show rigorously why one side of the Moon always faces the Earth (Munk and McDonald, 1960; and later papers up to 1975), a phenomenon known as tidal locking. Lord Kelvin had also considered this question, and had fashioned a non-quantitative answer being roughly correct. The Moon does not have a molten liquid core, so cannot rotate through the egg-shaped distortion caused by the Earth's gravitational pull. Rotation through this shape requires internal shearing, and only fluids are capable of such rotation with small frictional losses. Thus, the pointy end of the "egg" is gravitationally locked to always point directly towards the Earth, with some small librations, or wobbles. Large objects may strike the Moon from time to time, causing it to rotate about some axis, but it will quickly stop rotating. All frictional effects from such events will also cause the Moon to regress further away from the Earth.
In the 1950s, Munk investigated irregularities in the Earth's rotation, such as the Chandler wobble and annual and long-term changes in the length of day (rate of the Earth's rotation), to see how these were related to geophysical processes such as the changes in the atmosphere, ocean, and core, and the energy dissipated by tidal acceleration. He also investigated how western boundary currents, such as the Gulf Stream, dissipated planetary vorticity. His inviscid theory of these currents did not have a time invariant solution; no simple solution to this problem has ever been found.[citation needed]
In 1957, Munk and Harry Hess suggested the idea behind Project Mohole: to drill into the Mohorovicic Discontinuity and obtain a sample of the Earth's mantle. While such a project was not feasible on land, drilling in the open ocean would be more feasible, because the mantle is much closer to the sea floor. Initially led by the informal group of scientists known as the American Miscellaneous Society (AMSOC, including Hess, Maurice Ewing, and Roger Revelle),[4] the project was eventually taken over by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Initial test drillings into the sea floor led by Willard Bascom occurred off Guadalupe Island, Mexico in March and April 1961.[14] The project became mismanaged and increasingly expensive after Brown and Root won the contract to continue the effort, however, and Congress discontinued the project toward the end of 1966.[15] While Project Mohole was not successful, the idea led to projects such as NSF's Deep Sea Drilling Program.[16]
More at Wikipedia.
Walter Heinrich Munk (October 19, 1917 – February 8, 2019) was an American physical oceanographer.[1] He was a professor of geophysics emeritus and held the Secretary of the Navy/Chief of Naval Operations Oceanography Chair at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.
Munk was born in 1917 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, to a Jewish family.[2] He was sent to a boys' preparatory school in upper New York state in 1932.[3][4] The family selected New York because they envisioned a career in finance for Munk in a New York bank with connections to the family business. His father, Dr. Hans Munk, and his mother, Rega Brunner, divorced when Munk was a child. His maternal grandfather was a prominent banker and Austrian politician, Lucian Brunner (1850–1914). His stepfather, Dr. Rudolf Engelsberg, was briefly a member of the Austrian government of President Engelbert Dollfuss.[5]
Munk worked at the firm for three years and studied at Columbia University. He hated banking, and left the firm to attend the California Institute of Technology, where he earned a B.S. (1939) in physics. He applied for a summer job at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.[5] The next year the director of Scripps, the distinguished Norwegian oceanographer Harald Ulrik Sverdrup, accepted him as a doctoral student, but told Munk that he did "not know of a single job in oceanography which would become available in the next decade".
Munk completed an M.S. in geophysics at the California Institute of Technology [6] in 1940 and a PhD in oceanography from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1947. After graduation, Scripps hired him as an assistant professor of geophysics. He became a full professor there in 1954.
In 1968 Munk became a member of JASON, a panel of scientists who advise the U.S. government.
On June 20, 1953, Munk married Judith Horton. She was an active participant at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography for decades, where she made major contributions to architecture, campus planning, and the renovation and reuse of historical buildings. She and Walter were frequent traveling companions. Judith Munk died on May 19, 2006. Munk married La Jolla community leader Mary Coakley in June 2011. He turned 100 in October 2017.[7]
Munk applied for American citizenship in 1939 after the Anschluss and enlisted in the ski troops of the U.S. Army as a private. This was unusual as all the other young men at Scripps joined the U.S. Naval Reserve. Munk was eventually excused from military service to undertake defense-related research at Scripps. He joined several of his colleagues from Scripps at the U.S. Navy Radio and Sound Laboratory, where they developed methods related to amphibious warfare. Their methods were used successfully to predict surf conditions for Allied landings in North Africa, the Pacific theater of war, and on D-Day during the Normandy invasion.[5][8] Munk commented in 2009, "The Normandy landing is famous because weather conditions were very poor and you may not realize it was postponed by General Eisenhower for 24 hours because of the prevailing wave conditions. And then he did decide, in spite of the fact that conditions were not favorable, it would be better to go in than lose the surprise element, which would have been lost if they waited for the next tidal cycle [in] two weeks."[9]
Returning to Scripps from a sabbatical at Cambridge University in England, in 1956 Munk developed plans for a La Jolla branch of the Institute of Geophysics, then a part of the University of California, Los Angeles. With the new branch of IGP, an institution of the wider University of California system, to be focused on planetary physics with an emphasis on the Earth-Moon system, IGP changed its name to the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, IGPP. IGPP at La Jolla was built between 1959–1963 with funding from the University of California, the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the National Science Foundation, and private foundations, [10] [11] The redwood building was designed by architect Lloyd Ruocco, in close consultation with Judith and Walter Munk. The IGPP buildings have become the center of the Scripps campus. Among the early faculty appointments were Carl Eckart, George Backus, Freeman Gilbert and John Miles. The eminent geophysicist Sir Edward "Teddy" Bullard was a regular visitor to IGPP. In 1971 an endowment of $600,000 was established by Cecil Green to support visiting scholars, now known as Green Scholars. Munk served as director of IGPP/LJ from 1963–1982.
In the late 1980s, plans for an expansion of IGPP were developed by Judith and Walter Munk, and Sharyn and John Orcutt, in consultation with a local architect, Fred Liebhardt. The Revelle Laboratory was completed in 1993. At this time the original IGPP building was renamed the Walter and Judith Munk Laboratory for Geophysics. In 1994 the Scripps branch of IGPP was renamed the Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics.
Munk was the first to show rigorously why one side of the Moon always faces the Earth (Munk and McDonald, 1960; and later papers up to 1975), a phenomenon known as tidal locking. Lord Kelvin had also considered this question, and had fashioned a non-quantitative answer being roughly correct. The Moon does not have a molten liquid core, so cannot rotate through the egg-shaped distortion caused by the Earth's gravitational pull. Rotation through this shape requires internal shearing, and only fluids are capable of such rotation with small frictional losses. Thus, the pointy end of the "egg" is gravitationally locked to always point directly towards the Earth, with some small librations, or wobbles. Large objects may strike the Moon from time to time, causing it to rotate about some axis, but it will quickly stop rotating. All frictional effects from such events will also cause the Moon to regress further away from the Earth.
In the 1950s, Munk investigated irregularities in the Earth's rotation, such as the Chandler wobble and annual and long-term changes in the length of day (rate of the Earth's rotation), to see how these were related to geophysical processes such as the changes in the atmosphere, ocean, and core, and the energy dissipated by tidal acceleration. He also investigated how western boundary currents, such as the Gulf Stream, dissipated planetary vorticity. His inviscid theory of these currents did not have a time invariant solution; no simple solution to this problem has ever been found.[citation needed]
In 1957, Munk and Harry Hess suggested the idea behind Project Mohole: to drill into the Mohorovicic Discontinuity and obtain a sample of the Earth's mantle. While such a project was not feasible on land, drilling in the open ocean would be more feasible, because the mantle is much closer to the sea floor. Initially led by the informal group of scientists known as the American Miscellaneous Society (AMSOC, including Hess, Maurice Ewing, and Roger Revelle),[4] the project was eventually taken over by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Initial test drillings into the sea floor led by Willard Bascom occurred off Guadalupe Island, Mexico in March and April 1961.[14] The project became mismanaged and increasingly expensive after Brown and Root won the contract to continue the effort, however, and Congress discontinued the project toward the end of 1966.[15] While Project Mohole was not successful, the idea led to projects such as NSF's Deep Sea Drilling Program.[16]
More at Wikipedia.
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