216
H. von Storch, J. S ¨
undermann, and L. Magaard
travel and there is a time to retire when you have deserved it. There are a lot of young
people who are looking to do the next great thing. Why should we not quit one day
and enjoy the life.
Nowadays you are no longer working in science?
I am not working on scientific problems. That is true. I am still interested in what is
going on in oceanography and climate research.
Your last paper is written?
Is written in 1993, quite a while ago.
23
II
Let’s talk about changing themes, the effect of new methods and opportunities, experiments, models, remote sensing.
Some of it we have already touched. The big subjects, that I just mentioned like
ocean monitoring, free data exchange, and so on—these are problems that science
faces and that have to be solved beside the scientific problems. When it came to
ocean monitoring, there are always new things—for instance, during my lifetime the
satellites came up. I was one of the members of the initial TOPEX committee that
Karl Wunsch started up. We were discussing and were very, very excited about the
possibility of monitoring global sea level variability in areas without islands or fixed
observation points. That is of course a step into the future of oceanography. The
continuous observation of our environment is an enormous step forward.
Could you try to describe what the big topic in the forties was, in the fifties and so
forth? We just go through these six decades and you try to outline what to you was of
most interest or significance.
This is a good way to start. Before the World War deep ocean circulation was the
interesting stuff, Defant and W¨ ust and Sverdrup. In the 40s, I cannot really tell you.
In the 50s it was surely the ocean eddies.
Science is per se a matter of fashion. When I was a student, every physicist had
to study atomic physics, and if you were studying acoustic or anything else, you were
second-rate.
So, in this sense I am asking for the fashions, wie lang waren die R¨ ocke, die wissenschaftlichen,
24 in the 70s?
The eddies . . . of course, biochemical cycles.
23 Wyrtki, K., 1993: Global sea level rise. Proc. Circum-Pacific Int. Symp. Earth Environment, National
Fisheries Univ. Pusan, Pusan. D. Kim and Y. Kim, Eds., 215–226.
24 How long were the skirts in science?
H. von Storch, J. S ¨
undermann, and L. Magaard
travel and there is a time to retire when you have deserved it. There are a lot of young
people who are looking to do the next great thing. Why should we not quit one day
and enjoy the life.
Nowadays you are no longer working in science?
I am not working on scientific problems. That is true. I am still interested in what is
going on in oceanography and climate research.
Your last paper is written?
Is written in 1993, quite a while ago.
23
II
Let’s talk about changing themes, the effect of new methods and opportunities, experiments, models, remote sensing.
Some of it we have already touched. The big subjects, that I just mentioned like
ocean monitoring, free data exchange, and so on—these are problems that science
faces and that have to be solved beside the scientific problems. When it came to
ocean monitoring, there are always new things—for instance, during my lifetime the
satellites came up. I was one of the members of the initial TOPEX committee that
Karl Wunsch started up. We were discussing and were very, very excited about the
possibility of monitoring global sea level variability in areas without islands or fixed
observation points. That is of course a step into the future of oceanography. The
continuous observation of our environment is an enormous step forward.
Could you try to describe what the big topic in the forties was, in the fifties and so
forth? We just go through these six decades and you try to outline what to you was of
most interest or significance.
This is a good way to start. Before the World War deep ocean circulation was the
interesting stuff, Defant and W¨ ust and Sverdrup. In the 40s, I cannot really tell you.
In the 50s it was surely the ocean eddies.
Science is per se a matter of fashion. When I was a student, every physicist had
to study atomic physics, and if you were studying acoustic or anything else, you were
second-rate.
So, in this sense I am asking for the fashions, wie lang waren die R¨ ocke, die wissenschaftlichen,
24 in the 70s?
The eddies . . . of course, biochemical cycles.
23 Wyrtki, K., 1993: Global sea level rise. Proc. Circum-Pacific Int. Symp. Earth Environment, National
Fisheries Univ. Pusan, Pusan. D. Kim and Y. Kim, Eds., 215–226.
24 How long were the skirts in science?