Walter Munk
| Walter Heinrich Munk | |
|---|---|
Munk in in 2010 to accept his Crafoord Prize.
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| Born |
October 19, 1917 Vienna, Austria-Hungary |
| Nationality | USA |
| Fields | Oceanography, geophysics |
| Doctoral advisor | Harald Ulrik Sverdrup |
| Doctoral students | Charles Shipley Cox |
| Notable awards | Alexander Agassiz Medal (1977) National Medal of Science (1985) William Bowie Medal (1989) Vetlesen Prize (1993) Kyoto Prize (1999) Crafoord Prize (2010) |
Walter Heinrich Munk (born October 19, 1917) is an American physical oceanographer. He is professor of geophysics emeritus and holds the Secretary of the Navy/Chief of Naval Operations Oceanography Chair at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.
Born in 1917 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, Munk was sent to a boys' preparatory school in upper New York state in 1932. The family selected New York because they envisioned a career in finance for Munk in a New York bank with connections to the family business. His father, Dr. Hans Munk, and his mother, Rega Brunner, divorced when Munk was a child. His maternal grandfather was a prominent banker and Austrian politician, Lucian Brunner (1850–1914). His stepfather, Dr. Rudolf Engelsberg, was briefly a member of the Austrian government of President Engelbert Dollfuss.
Munk worked at the firm for three years and studied at Columbia University. He hated banking, and left the firm to attend the California Institute of Technology, where he earned a B.S. (1939) in physics. He applied for a summer job at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. The next year the director of Scripps, the distinguished Norwegian oceanographer Harald Ulrik Sverdrup, accepted him as a doctoral student, but told Munk that he did "not know of a single job in oceanography which would become available in the next decade".
Munk completed an M.S. in geophysics at the California Institute of Technology in 1940 and a PhD in oceanography from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1947. After graduation, Scripps hired him as an assistant professor of geophysics. He became a full professor there in 1954.
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