Evolution of Physical Oceanography: Scientific Surveys in Honor of Henry Stommel

Evolution of Physical Oceanography was created to mark the career of Henry M. Stommel, the leading physical oceanographer of the 20th Century and a longtime MIT faculty member. The authors of the different chapters were asked to describe the evolution of their subject over the history of physical oceanography, and to provide a survey of the state-of-the-art of their subject as of 1980. Many of the chapters in this textbook are still up-to-date descriptions of active scientific fields, and all of them are important historical records.
The influence of Henry Stommel on the development of physical oceanography over the past four decades has been immense. Although he is best known as a major generator of modern concepts of ocean circulation, his research interests have encompassed much of physical oceanography, and the colleagues he influenced have explored every ocean, literally and figuratively. In this volume, comprehensive surveys trace the development of major oceanographic fields since Stommel began his professional life and summarize the state of these subjects now—they cover "where we are and how we arrived, what is known and seems probable, and what seem now to be the key questions."