Pioneer oceanographer receives A. A. Michelson Award

Dr. Walter Munk, a pioneering oceanographer, was honored yesterday by the Navy League of the United States as the recipient of its 1999 A.A. Michelson Award. Dr. Munk's work confirmed the geological theories of plate tectonics and continental drift, and he conducted early experiments that demonstrated the possibility that the earth was undergoing long-term global warming. Navy League National President John R. Fisher presented the award on April 26 in a Washington, DC ceremony. Dr. Munk has long been associated with the Office of Naval Research as a principal investigator on many important research programs; the Office of Naval Research nominated him for the Michelson Award.

Named in honor of A.A. Michelson, a Navy physicist who was the first American Nobel laureate, the award recognizes scientists whose work has resulted in significant improvements to the nation's maritime forces, or to enhancements in the U.S. industrial technology base.

The Navy League, which was chartered in 1902, is a 70,000-member civilian organization dedicated to maintaining a strong Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and Merchant Marine.

Dr. Walter Munk has served the Navy for more than fifty years as one of the founding greats of modern oceanography. His improvement of the bathythermograph in the early 1940s was in its own way as important to the development of oceanography as the refinement of the optical telescope was to the history of astronomy. His work revealed that the ocean's temperature profile was not smooth, and he saw the importance this fact held for underwater acoustic propagation and the entire field of submarine and antisubmarine warfare. He also worked on ocean prediction, and personally did the surf forecasting for Operation Torch, the 1942 Allied invasion of Axis North Africa.

After the War Munk organized Project Cabot, the first synoptic study of the Gulf Stream. He also conducted the Heard Island experiment, which revealed the possibility of exploiting the deep sound channel for submarine tracking. The work at Heard Island led directly to SOSUS, an undersea monitoring system that was crucial to American victory in the Cold War. He found time during a full academic career to give the Navy hands-on assistance when it needed it again during the Vietnam War, when he advised the Seabees on the humble but important technology of dock construction.

During his long career at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Munk has conceived and led many other major programs in geophysics and physical oceanography, including Project Mohole and other deep drilling projects. In his eightieth year he was the lead investigator in the Acoustic Thermometry of Ocean Climate project, an international effort to measure ocean climate directly using undersea acoustics. Our ability to detect, understand, and model climate change is deeply indebted to Walter Munk.