Seventy Years of Exploration in Oceanography Part 7 ppsx

76 11 Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics (IGPP) 1962–Present

hockey at Newnham College from 1912–1914, but had to return to Austria when

WWI started. At that time it was most unusual for girls from the Continent to study

in the UK. Her major was in botany, and her tutor was Harold Jeffreys, then a Reader

in Botany.2

Hasselmann: You have told me that you have three heroes: Sverdrup, Revelle, and

G.I. Taylor. Did you meet Taylor at that time?

Munk: Yes. The three have been my role models: my teacher Sverdrup, my mentor

Revelle, but if you have to use the word “genius,” Taylor is the one. I can imagine

writing some of the papers Harald has written, or fighting some of Roger’s battles,

but G.I. . . . , never. Whether it had to do with wind shear, turbulence, a mushroom

anchor, crystal dislocation, a combination of brilliant insight plus careful laboratory

measurements would yield fundamental truths. In 1986 I participated in a celebra￾tion of his hundredth birthday (he was then ten years gone) and said that everything

G.I. had touched turned to gold. Not so, said George Batchelor, who took me to an

attic which stored folders upon folders of work that G.I. had abandoned. Evidently

if an idea did not yield significant results, theoretically or experimentally, within

a month, G.I. would set it aside. Letting things go is not a talent I share.3

von Storch: I have heard you speak of Sir Edward Bullard as one of the people who

made IGPP what it is.

Munk: Yes, Teddy played a major role. In his later life he spent winters at IGPP

and he died in La Jolla in 1980. By the time I met him, he had truly transformed

the field of geophysics. In the early 1940’s all the major geophysical tools, based

on seismology, gravity, magnetism and geothermal heat flow, had been developed

for use on land, and their application for use at sea was considered to be impossibly

difficult. Bullard played a significant role in the adoption of all four methods for

work at sea; in the cases of heat flow and magnetism he played the leading role.

Professor Jerome Namias, a pioneer in climate science, and was waiting outside the door for what

I expected to be a short discussion. But of course Namias could not stop talking about his favorite

subject. An hour later Prince Philip came out wiping his brow, “I’m glad we don’t have to worry

about climate in Britain, we already know it’s going to be beastly.”

In 1997 during the last trip of the Royal Yacht Britannia, an official reception was held in Hong

Kong. My brother Alfred, who had a distinguished career as an economist with Standard Oil of

Indiana and rather looked down on his brother’s impoverished academic career, was visiting there

and attended the reception. When his name was announced, Prince Philip asked, “Are you related

to Professor Munk?” Things have never been the same.

2 Mother was with us in 1955 when Sir Harold came for tea. He took one long look at mother and

said “Brunner” (her maiden name).

3 G.I. once took me to dinner at Trinity College, and spoke of some recent work by Michael

Longuet-Higgins on the role of collimation in turning a confused, offshore sea into coherent long￾crested breakers. As wave crests turn parallel to shore by wave refraction in shallow water, the

subtended angular beam is narrowed and the waves become more “long-crested.” “I don’t think

that’s the whole story,” G.I. said. He had in mind the non-linear capture of short waves by longer,

faster waves coming from behind. The problem is still under consideration.