Carl Wunsch papers

Carl Issac Wunsch, born 1941, was the Cecil and Ida Green Professor Emeritus of Physical Oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) before his retirement in 2013. He earned a BS degree in 1962 and a PhD in 1966 in geophysics at the MIT. At MIT he served as an assistant professor of physical oceanography, 1967-1970; associate professor, 1970-1975; professor, 1975-1976; Cecil and Ida Green professor emeritus of physical oceanography, 1976-2013; head of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 1977-1981; Secretary of the Navy research professor, 1985-1989.

During his professional career, most of which has been spent at MIT, Carl Wunsch has worked on many aspects of physical oceanography and its climate implications, with emphasis on observations of all types, including the global-scale, using satellites and acoustic tomographic, and various conventional observation methods. Wunsch has authored or co-authored over 250 scientific papers and several books including The Ocean Circulation Inverse Problem and Discrete Inverse and State Estimation Problems (both Cambridge University Press). He has also taught at institutions around the world such as the California Institute of Technology, Cambridge University, and the Jet Propulsion Lab.

Wunsch has been honored as a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a fellow for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fulbright Scholar. He also received the Maurice Ewing Medal from the American Geophysical Union and the U.S. Navy in 1990, the Henry Stommel Research Award from the American Meteorological Society in 2000, and the William Bowie Medal from the American Geophysical Union in 2006.

*This information retrieved from the EAPS webpage, https://eapsweb.mit.edu/people/wunsch.