Oceanography | Vol.30, No.4
MILESTONES
Thank You, Walter Munk,
for Being There at the Beginning
Walter Munk turned 100 on October 19, 2017. I first met Walter
almost half a century ago, when I was a young scientist work-
ing in Europe, and was in the process of changing my focus
from fluid mechanics to physical oceanography. At that time,
an older European colleague told me that there were just two
real oceanographers in the United States: Henry Stommel and
Walter Munk. Over the past 50 years, I’ve had the satisfac-
tion of working down the hallway from Henry (at Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution), and of having contact with Walter
on a fair number of occasions. In addition to being a gregari-
ous and engaging gentleman, Walter has been an inspiring and
enthusiastic colleague to many of us, and a formative presence
to more than a few.
Walter played an important role in the creation of The
Oceanography Society. His eclectic approach to oceanogra-
phy and his penchant for speaking and writing simply, directly,
and clearly so that many, rather than just a few, could under-
stand him were already legendary—and inspired the mission of
Oceanography magazine. In our initial inquiries to colleagues
in 1987 prior to forming TOS, Walter was encouraging about
the Society’s goals and structure. In his closing remarks at the
Inaugural Meeting of TOS in 1989, he commented, “It is time for
the oceanographic disciplines to come together. It is time for an
Oceanography Society.” His full remarks are in Oceanography,
volume 2, number 2 (https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.1989.19);
that issue also contains his initial article about the Heard Island
Experiment (https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.1989.10), which
is a long story in and of itself. (I worked closely with Walter
through the Heard Island years, and we both learned a lot about
whales.) The 1989 article was Walter’s second in Oceanography;
his first was in volume 1, number 1, on ocean acoustic tomogra-
phy (https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.1988.31). Over the years,
Walter has authored 14 submissions to Oceanography and has
been mentioned in the magazine over 200 times. Articles writ-
ten by or mentioning Walter now have more than 350,000 hits
on Google. And he is still working, on wind waves as it turns out,
a fitting return to one of his early successes: predicting the wave
conditions for the D-Day invasion of Normandy.
Walter is a strikingly gracious gentleman who has had an
enormous positive impact on our science and on the people
he has encountered, myself included. A recent biography and
tribute that appeared in 2016 in Acoustics Today (Volume 12,
pages 36–42) provides more context for these statements; no
need to repeat them here. Those of us working in oceanogra-
phy today are fortunate to have his personality and his intel-
lect as part of our culture. And TOS is fortunate to have had
his sincere and continuing interest in the success of our Society.
Carry on, Walter!
AUTHOR
Mel Briscoe (mel@oceangeeks.com) is President, OceanGeeks LLC,
Alexandria, VA, USA.
ARTICLE CITATION
Briscoe, M. 2017. Thank you, Walter Munk, for being there at the beginning.
Oceanography 30(4):8, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2017.402.
By Mel Briscoe
Photo by Erik Jepsen/UC San Diego Publications