Hans Ertel

Hans Ertel (March 24, 1904 in Berlin – July 2, 1971 in Berlin) was a German natural scientist and a pioneer in geophysics, meteorology and hydrodynamics.

Hans Ertel began his scientific career at the former Preußischen Meteorologischen Institut (Prussian Meteorological Institute), where the representatives of the Austrian school of meteorology, (Heinrich von Ficker and Albert Defant) had formative influence on him and gave him their lasting support. Ertel continued the works of Felix Maria von Exner-Ewarten, a leading theoretical meteorologist of his time who lived in Vienna, and he completed many of them. He developed into a capable theoretical physicist early on and he was already to publish research results or theoretical approaches in this subject as a young man. Ertel's famous vorticity equation of 1942 belongs today to the basic work of modern geophysics and astrophysics.

In 1943, he was given the position of professor for meteorology and geophysics at the University of Innsbruck, and he also attended lectures by Arnold Sommerfeld. After Second World War, Ertel was interested in a professorship for geophysics at the University of Munich, but was instead appointed to professor for geophysics at Berlin University in 1946, where he also became the director of the Institute for Meteorology and Geophysics which belonged to the university.

At the invitation of various scientists, such as Hilding Köhler, Markus Bath and Carl-Gustav Rossby, with whom he also maintained long friendships, Ertel held lectures at and Uppsala University in Sweden and took part in congresses, thereby creating a good reputation for his field of research at the Berlin University.

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