Right Place, Right Time: An Informal Memoir

Carl Wunsch

doi:10.1146/annurev-marine-021320-125821

Annual Review of Marine Science

Volume 13, 2021

Review Article

Free

Right Place, Right Time: An Informal Memoir

Carl Wunsch^1,2
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Affiliations: ¹Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA; email: [email protected] ²Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
Vol. 13:1-21 (Volume publication date January 2021) https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-marine-021320-125821
First published as a Review in Advance on June 05, 2020
Copyright © 2021 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved

Abstract

My career spanned the revolution in understanding of the large-scale fluid ocean, as modern electronics produced vast new capabilities. I started in the days of almost purely mechanical instruments operated by seagoing scientists, ones not so different from those used more than a century earlier. Elegant theories existed of hypothetical steady-state oceans. Today, we understand that the ocean is a highly turbulent fluid, interacting over global scales, and it is now studied by large teams using spacecraft and diverse sets of self-contained in situ instrumentation. Mine was an accidental career: I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time.

Keyword(s): autobiography, ocean circulation and interior processes, oceanographic history, physical oceanography

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2024-05-08

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