Albert Defant

Albert Joseph Maria Defant (July 12, 1884, Trient – December 24, 1974, Innsbruck) was an Austrian meteorologist and oceanographer. He published fundamental works on the physics of the atmosphere and ocean and is regarded as one of the founders of physical oceanography.

Albert Defant was born in Trient when this was still part of the Austrian Empire. Since 1919 this city is Trento in Italy. Albert Defant went to schools in Trient and Innsbruck and then studied mathematics, physics, and geophysics at the University of Innsbruck in Austria from 1902. He received his PhD at Innsbruck University in 1906 with a thesis on raindrop sizes. He started working at the Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik (Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics) in Vienna, Austria in 1907. He obtained his Habilitation (degree permitting to teach at the university) at Vienna University in 1909 with a thesis on water level changes of Lake Garda.

Defant stayed at the Zentralanstalt until 1918, working mostly on problems of atmospheric physics, in particular in mountain ranges. He also gained experience in applied weather forecasting. During the later years of that period, he mainly focused on large-scale atmospheric circulation and on water level changes in lakes and adjacent seas, in particular tides and seiches.

The idea that asymmetries were essential to the general circulation received only minor support until Defant (1921) proposed that the motions in middle latitudes were simply a manifestation of turbulence on a very large scale. Defant went beyond Bigelow by applying the results of turbulence theory to estimate the amount of heat that would be transported poleward by turbulent eddies with diameters of thousands of kilometers. He found that this agreed well with the required transport and concluded that his ideas were confirmed.

Defant was Professor of Cosmic Physics (corresponding to meteorology and geophysics) at Innsbruck University from 1919 to 1926. During that time he was able to show that large-scale structures in the atmosphere can provide meridional heat transport from tropical to high latitudes.

By that time he was also rated as an expert on tides, and he was invited to participate in two cruises of the German survey vessel "Panther" in the North Sea in 1925 and 1926. Defant was Professor of Oceanography at the "Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität" (later Humboldt University) and also Director of the "Institut and Museum für Meereskunde" (Institute and Museum of Marine Science) in Berlin from 1926 to 1945. This institute was the leading institution of marine research in Germany at that time.

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