11 Facts About Henry Stommel

Henry Melson Stommel was a major contributor to the field of physical oceanography.

Widely recognized as one of the most influential and productive oceanographers of his time, Stommel was both a groundbreaking theoretician and an astute, seagoing observer.

An anomaly among modern scientists, Henry Stommel became a full professor without an earned doctorate.

Henry Stommel was research associate at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution from 1944 to 1959 where the Office of Naval Research generously supported his projects.

Henry Stommel became professor of oceanography at Harvard University in 1959 and moved to Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1963, where he remained until 1978, returning to Woods Hole until his retirement.

Henry Stommel established the PANULIRUS station in Bermuda.

Henry Stommel was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1962 and received the National Medal of Science in 1989.

Henry Stommel showed that the north-south gradient of the strength of the horizontal Coriolis force was responsible for the observed fact that the return flow of the slow interior gyre circulations is concentrated in fast moving western boundary currents, such as the Gulf Stream and the Kuroshio Current, a process known as western intensification.

Together with Arnold Arons, Henry Stommel extended this circulation to the deep ocean, proposing a global circulation in which surface water sinks in the polar regions to feed the deep boundary currents on the western sides of basins, while the interior flow actually moves towards the pole.

Henry Stommel developed early models of the thermohaline circulation which suggested that it might have more than one stable state.

Henry Stommel married Elizabeth Brown, daughter of Huntington Brown, professor of English at the University of Minnesota, and Elizabeth Waldo Wentworth Brown, originally of Boston, on December 6,1950.