| Citation | Carl Wunsch is one of the world's most creative and respected oceanographers whose fundamental research and intellectual leadership have been enormously influential. During the first hundred years of oceanography, since The Challenger expedition in 1872?6, the oceans were grossly undersampled so that the sparse data sets collected by a few vessels chasing around the world permitted oceanographers free reign to argue for their favourite model. Wunsch played the major role in changing this dream?like investigation of the ocean circulation. His 1978 paper, developing the application of inverse theory to the circulation of the North Atlantic, showed the range of possible models consistent with the data and known conservation laws. In later papers he derived a methodology by which it was possible to determine in advance whether a proposed sampling strategy can usefully answer the questions posed. He then took a leading part in developing technologies for adequately sampling various oceanic processes. In particular, he designed the dense horizontal grids of satellite altimetry which, when combined with the interior resolution of ocean acoustic tomography and restrained by theoretical models, is greatly refining our knowledge of the ocean circulation and revolutionising our understanding of tides, eddies and mixing processes. These are all topics to which Wunsch has made major theoretical and observational contributions. Wunsch was the first recipient of the Texas Instruments Foundation Prize for Science in 1975 and was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 1978 and was awarded the prestigious Maurice Ewing Medal of the American Geophysical Union in 1990. He was the originator and Co?chairman of the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE), which exploited the application of new technology to shipborne exploration. He has for many years been Chairman of the Science Working Group for the TOPEX Poseidon altimetry experiment, coordinated by NASA (USA) and CNES (France), which since 1992 has continuously measured the height of nearly the entire ocean surface and thereby determined many processes to unprecedented accuracy. Wunsch has spent a number of sabbaticals working in Britain and is often called upon to give advice to British scientific bodies, such as NERC. He is also frequently approached by the United States Government because of his far reaching expertise on aspects of oceanography and climate. |