Over the last ?ve decades Physical Oceanography developed explosively
from a state with only a few observations and theories to a mature
science with global ?eld p- grams, massivecomputerpower,
andacomplextheoreticalframework. Thescientists
wholedthisdevelopmentarealreadyorwillsoonberetired.
Thiscollectionofessays
documentssomeofthebreakthroughsandalsotriestocapturethespiritofexploration
and excitement that accompanied these developments.
Theoriginalmotivationforthepresentbookcamefromourdesiretounderstand the
current social and scienti?c framework in which we work as physical
ocean- raphers. Brief re?ection makes it obvious that this framework
must have historical roots. However, discussions about these roots with
senior scientists only made the picture more complex and confusing. We
came to the conclusion that there is no simple story that explains the
current state of affairs. The natural solution was to let
seniorscientiststellhowtheyperceivedthedevelopmentsinthe?eld,
eachfromtheir own unique point of view. Thus, by surrendering editorial
objectivity we arrived at a broader, more objective view. The approach
is comparable to data acquisition: it is known that there are no perfect
observations, so one makes many. The goal then is to reduce biases by
sampling as often as possible. However, to keep the book at a manageable
size and still give the individual authors space enough to cover several
decades, we were limited to 10 to 20 authors whose contributions should
not exceed 20 pages. Thus, the book is by no means a complete history of
physical oceanography; many important scientists and subdisciplines of
the ?eld are not accounted f
