Klaus Wyrtki

Background

Wyrtki, Klaus was born on February 7, 1925 in Tarnowitz, Germany. Son of Wilhelm and Margarete (Pacharzina) Wyrtki. came to the United States, 1961.

Education

Born in Tarnowitz, Upper Silesia, Poland, in 1925, from 1945-1948 Wyrtki attended the University of Marburg in Germany, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Kiel in 1950.

Career

With, German Hydrographic Institute, Hamburg, 1950-1951; German Research Council postdoctoral research fellow, U. Kiel, 1951-1954; head, Institute Marine Research, Djakarta, Indonesia, 1954-1957; senior research officer, then principal research officer division fisheries and oceanography, Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organisation, Sydney, Australia, 1958-1961; associate research oceanographer, then research oceanographer, Scripps Institution Oceanography, University of California, 1961-1964; professor oceanography, U. Hawaii, Honolulu, since 1964; professor emeritus, U. Hawaii, Honolulu, 1993. Chairman North Pacific Experiment, 1974-1980, commission on climate changes and oceanInternat. Association Physical Sciences of the Oceans.

Member Special Committee on Ocean Research Working Group on Prediction of El Nino, Science Working Group on Topography Experiment, panel on climate and global change National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

Achievements

• In 1991, Wyrtki was awarded the Sverdrup Gold Medal Award by the American Meteorological Society, for "outstanding contributions to the dynamics of ocean currents, especially the Gulf Stream". In 2003, Wyrtki was awarded the Prince Albert I Medal. In 2004, he was awarded the Alexander Agassiz Medal of the National Academy of Sciences "for fundamental contributions to the understanding of the oceanic general circulation of abyssal and thermocline waters and for providing the intellectual underpinning for our understanding of ENSO (El Niño)".
  
  He is also the winner of the Rosenstiel Award of the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, the Albert Defant Medal of the German Meteorological Society, and the Maurice Ewing Medal from the American Geophysical Union. In 2007, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. A research vessel at the University of Hawaii is named in his honor. According to friend and colleague Axel Timmermann, Wyrtki "was really one of the two or three greatest oceanographers of all time, I think.
  
  Without him we wouldn't do El Nino forecasting on a regular basis. Without him perhaps we wouldn't understand the effects of global warming on sea level tides. He made some amazing contributions to science and society.".

Works

• book

  • Oceanographic atlas of the International Indian Ocean Expedition

    (This work covers distribution of properties at the sea su...)

  • Oceanographic Atlas of the International Indian Ocean Expedition

Membership

[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]

He was a professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography until 1964, when he became a member of the faculty of the Department of Oceanography at the University of Hawaii Manoa.

Connections

Married Helga Kocher, June 6, 1954 (divorced 1970). Children: Undine, Oliver. Married Erika Maassen.