Walter H. Munk, world-renowned oceanographer and geophysicist, has died at 101 at his home in San Diego. Referred to by many as “Einstein of the sea“, Dr. Munk’s work ranged from predicting wave heights on beaches for an amphibious landing in World War II to pioneering research on oceanic sound transmission to measure changes in water temperatures, forecast waves and seek signs of global warming.  

From the Scripps Institution obituary:  As a geophysicist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, Munk made groundbreaking observations of waves, ocean temperature, tidal energy in the deep ocean, ocean acoustics and the rotation of the earth. As an advocate of science and broader scholarship, Munk served as an advisor to presidents and the Pentagon and conferred with public figures including the Dalai Lama and Pope Francis. His convictions led him to refuse to sign a loyalty oath required by the University of California during the peak of anti-communist fervor in the early 1950s and his passion helped create the architecture that would become the defining style of the Scripps Oceanography campus.

Munk’s contributions to science throughout the latter half of the 20th Century and into the present century were measured not only in terms of the new knowledge his research yielded, but in the quality and diversity of the questions he considered. An ethos he expressed throughout his career was for scientists to take risks, pursue new directions, and embrace the educational value of failure.

“Walter Munk has been a world treasure for ocean science and geophysics,” said Scripps Oceanography Director Margaret Leinen. “He has been a guiding force, a stimulating force, a provocative force in science for 80 years. While one of the most distinguished and honored scientists in the world, Walter never rested on his accomplishments. He was always interested in sparking a discussion about what’s coming next. Ideas were important to him, and the future of geoscience and oceanography was so important to him that he pushed all of us to be audacious, to take action, and to focus on the big ideas that could transform our world.” …

“From World War II through the 1990s, the U.S. Navy poured financial and logistical support into American oceanography, for its importance in anti-submarine warfare, national defense, and climate change,” said Naomi Oreskes, professor of the history of science at Harvard University. “Walter Munk was one of the leaders of the generation of men and women who used this support to revolutionize our understanding of the oceans, particularly the physical phenomena of waves, tides and currents, and the relationship of these phenomena to basic geophysical processes. In his long life, he inspired scores of younger scientists to take on the challenges of understanding the geophysics of the Earth.”

Rebellion and romance played a role in Munk’s journey to a science career at Scripps. He was born on Oct. 19, 1917, in Vienna, Austria, to a cosmopolitan banking family. In 1932, when he was 14, his family sent him to New York for school with the expectation that his time in the financial capital would prepare him for his own career in banking. After spending a few years working at the firm of a family friend, Munk decided he had no fondness for banking and instead applied to and was accepted at the California Institute of Technology. There he received a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1939 and a master’s degree in geophysics in 1940.

In pursuit of a romantic interest who vacationed in La Jolla, Munk applied for a summer job at Scripps in 1939. The infatuation with the girl passed, but Munk acquired a new love for San Diego. After receiving his master’s, he returned to Scripps and was admitted as a PhD candidate. 

Munk became an American citizen in 1939 and when war with Germany seemed imminent, he joined the U.S. Army, serving in the 146th Field Artillery, 41st Division at Fort Lewis, Wash. Sverdrup, however, requested his recall in 1941 and Munk returned to Scripps to begin work at the new U.S. Navy Radio and Sound Laboratory in the San Diego neighborhood of Point Loma. A week after his release, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

After the war, Munk returned to the dissertation he had set aside. He received a PhD in oceanography from the University of California Los Angeles, with which Scripps was affiliated at the time, in 1947.

Read the full obituary here.

Thanks to Alaric Bond for contributing to this post.