Munk, Walter

▪ 2000

      On June 18, 1999, American oceanographer Walter Munk of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, at the University of California, San Diego, won the 15th annual Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences for his work in physical oceanography and geophysics; he became the first in his field to be honoured with this award. At a ceremony in Kyoto, Japan, the Inamori Foundation presented him with a 50 million yen (about $400,000) award.

      Born on Oct. 19, 1917, in Vienna, Munk moved to New York City as a teenager. He studied at Columbia University but eventually earned a B.S. (1939) in physics from the California Institute of Technology. Munk completed an M.S. in geophysics in 1940 and a Ph.D. 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.

      Earlier he had enlisted in the U.S. Army following the 1938 occupation of Austria by Germany. From 1939 to 1945 he joined several of his colleagues from the Scripps Institution at the U.S. Navy Radio and Sound Laboratory, where they developed methods related to amphibious warfare. Their method for predicting and dealing with waves was carried out successfully by the Allied Forces on D-Day (June 6, 1944) during the Normandy invasion. After World War II Munk also helped to analyze the currents, diffusion, and water exchanges at Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific, where the United States was testing nuclear weapons. In 1968 he became a member of JASON, a panel of scientists who advised the U.S. government.

      Munk “made fundamental discoveries in areas ranging from the effect of the moon on tides to the circulation of the deep sea,” said director of Scripps Institution Charles Kennel. In addition, he contributed much to the areas of ocean currents and circulation as well as to wave propagation. Munk also played a leading role in developing a method for determining the course of long-term climatic changes related to global warming. His major works include The Rotation of the Earth: A Geophysical Discussion (with G.J.F. MacDonald, 1960) and Ocean Acoustic Tomography (with P. Worchester, 1995). Munk was the recipient of the American Geological Society's 1965 Arthur L. Day Medal, the American Meteorological Society's 1966 Sverdrup Gold Medal, the Royal Astronomical Society's 1968 Gold Medal, and the American Geophysical Union's 1989 William Bowie Medal, among others.

Amy Weber

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