Seventy Years of Exploration in Oceanography Part 2 pps

Preface xvii

the de facto end of the Cold War, the Vannevar Bush approach is no longer valid.”6

At that time, Walter was 80, so it did not need to concern him.

Walter Munk belonged to a fortunate generation of scientists who could mostly

determine themselves how to pursue their science. As long as it was considered

“good science,” everything was fine, because – in the logic of Vannevar Bush – this

would eventually lead to useful results, useful for the nation, for the military, for

industry. Certainly, not all projects would succeed in this respect, but a sufficiently

large percentage of all projects. Thus he is telling us about an approach to science

that deviates markedly from contemporary top-down approaches, where it is often

the number of publications in Nature and Science that decide on tenure and careers.

Maybe the old model of science is irrevocably gone; maybe there will be some kind

of renaissance sometime later.

There are also other things to learn from Walter. He is not talking about university

committees, about the need to be present when the purportedly important people

meet, when allegedly significant decisions are taken. Instead, he just goes on doing

science, thinking about waves, tides, the rotating earth, sound propagation in the

ocean – always on the move, from the short term to the long term, always inventing

new terminology, always grasping the hidden core of a problem. We have seen many

Fig. I.2 Judith and Walter celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary on the patio at Seiche, their

self-designed and self-built home north of Scripps Institution of Oceanography (2003). In Austria,

Walter’s homeland, country houses were often named. Seiche is an oceanographic term for oscil￾lations of a lake or landlocked sea, however there is no scientific significance here; Judith’s mother

chose the name because she liked the sound of the French word. Judith and Walter have welcomed

guests from around the world to Seiche for over 50 years

6 U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science: Unlocking our future: towards a new

national science policy. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC (1998)