ABOVE: Walter Munk
ERIK JEPSEN/UC SAN DIEGO
World-renowned oceanographer Walter Munk died last Friday (February 8). He was 101.
“We thought he would live forever,” Munk’s wife, Mary, tells the San Diego Union-Tribune. He succumbed to pneumonia at his seaside home near the University of California (UCSD), San Diego. “His legacy,” Mary says, “will be his passion for the ocean, which was endless.”
Munk relentlessly studied the ocean’s waves, and decades ago, advanced scientists’ ability to forecast surf, which helped American troops land more safely on D-Day during World War II. He also analyzed the fallout of the hydrogen bomb and was among the first scientists to pull on scuba gear and go diving to study the oceans, according to the Union-Tribune.
Long associated with the Scripps Institute for Oceanography at UCSD, Munk spent his career “divining the interlocked patterns beneath the seeming clutter and chaos of the world’s oceans,” Josh ...
