Henry Stommel
Henry Melson Stommel ( born September 27, 1920 in Wilmington, Delaware; † January 17, 1992 ) was an American oceanographer.
Stommel studied at Yale University, where he in 1942 his bachelor's degree and then made up to 1944 worked as an instructor in mathematics and astronomy. From 1944 to 1959 he was a scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution ( WHOAI ), first in mandatory military service. In 1954 he built the Panulirus station on Bermuda for the Woods Hole Institute. Although he was never a doctorate, he became in 1959 a professor of oceanography at Harvard University for his scientific work. From 1963 he was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and from 1978 until his retirement back in Woods Hole.
Stommel was one of the leading oceanographers and performed in the 1940s and 1950s, fundamental work in the elucidation of the global ocean circulation and the underlying physical mechanisms. For example, he found (initially in models, which were confirmed later by observation) as these are closed by deep currents and he found the cause of the strengthening of the westerly currents like the Gulf Stream towards its eastern counterparts. He also dealt with turbulent diffusion, the classification of estuaries and the influence of volcanoes on climate.
In 1962, he was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences and in 1989 he received the National Medal of Science. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1983. In 1983 he was awarded the Crafoord Prize in 1986 for the first time awarded Albert Defant Medal of the German Meteorological Society.
He was married in 1950 and had two sons and a daughter. One of his sons was fishing in Falmouth.
Writings
- Collected Works, American Meteorological Society, 1996, 3 volumes, published by Nelson Hogg, Rui Xin Huang
- Science of the Seven Seas, Cornell Maritime Press, 1945.
- The Gulf Stream; A Physical and Dynamical Description, 2nd edition, University of California Press, 1972. ISBN 0520012232
- A view of the sea. A Discussion in between a Chief Engineer and at Oceanographer about the Machinery of the Ocean Circulation, Princeton University Press, 1987, ISBN 0691084580 ( 2001, translated into Chinese )
- Dennis W. Moore An Introduction to the Coriolis Force, Columbia University Press, 1989. ISBN 0231066376