Page 72 - Spring 2018

Sound Perspectives
Peter F. Worcester
Postal:
Scripps Institution of Oceanography University of California, San Diego 9500 Gilman Drive, 0225 La Jolla, California 92093-0225, USA
Email:
pworcester@ucsd.edu
Munk at the Alexa Bank Atoll during the Capricorn Expedition in 1952, the first time Scripps researchers used scuba diving to explore the Pacific. Photo from Special Collections & Archives, Univer- sity of California, San Diego.
Celebrating 100: Walter H. Munk
Walter H. Munk, Professor Emeritus of Geophysics in the Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, Scripps Institution of Ocean- ography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, turned 100 on October 19, 2017. In a career spanning more than 75 years, Professor Munk has made seminal contributions to acoustical oceanography, underwater acoustics, physical oceanog- raphy, and geophysics. His work has advanced the understanding of ocean waves, wind-driven ocean gyres, deep-sea tides, internal waves, the rotation of the earth, ocean acoustics, and geophysical data analysis. Even today, on arriving at his beau- tiful home overlooking the ocean in La Jolla, one usually finds him hard at work on his latest manuscript in which he is tackling the long-standing (and unsolved) problem of how the wind generates ocean surface waves. In recent years, Professor Munk has also worked on the relationship between surface waves and their acous- tic signatures on the seafloor (Farrell and Munk, 2013; Farrell et al., 2016). He is an active advocate of the role of acoustic networks in observing systems designed to study the rapidly changing Arctic (Mikhalevsky et al., 2015). Professor Munk still takes a proactive interest in the affairs of the US Navy research establishment through his Secretary of the Navy Chair. He has received every conceivable honor, from the National Medal of Science to the Kyoto Prize. He is an Honorary Fel- low of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA). The United States Navy and The Oceanography Society established the Walter Munk Award for Distinguished Re- search in Oceanography Related to Sound and the Sea in his honor.
A recent brief biography appeared in Acoustics Today (Spindel and Worcester, 2016). von Storch and Hasselmann (2010) provide a fascinating account of Professor Munk’s life and work that resulted from a prolonged weekend discussion with him.
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