Prolineserver (talk) · CC BY-SA 3.0

Walter Munk brought statistical rigor to oceanography, and during World War II worked with his doctoral advisor, Harald Sverdrup, to develop wave-forecasting methods used to plan Allied beach landings in every theater of the war. He went on to study tides, internal waves, deep-sea drilling and sea-level rise over a career that ran nearly 80 years, and beginning in 1975 developed ocean acoustic tomography with Carl Wunsch, using sound to measure ocean temperature across entire ocean basins. His work won the National Medal of Science, the Kyoto Prize and induction into the French Legion of Honour.