Ed Lorenz in 1994.
(Photo by Charles Semmer.)
On 31 July 1986, two eminent atmospheric
scientists sat down to reminisce for several
hours at the NCAR Mesa Laboratory. They
were former NCAR associate director Philip Thompson
and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor
Edward Lorenz, who died on 16 April 2008. Upon receiving
the 1991 Kyoto Prize for basic research, Lorenz was
cited as having “brought about one of the most
dramatic changes in mankind’s view of nature
since Sir Isaac Newton.” Lorenz was a regular
summer visitor at NCAR from its founding in 1960
through the 1990s.
This conversation is one of close
to 100 interviews now in the vaults of
the Tape-Recorded Interview Project (TRIP),
sponsored by the American Meteorological Society
and UCAR. Each year several volunteers meet with
leaders in the field who reflect on their lives and
careers. Audiocassette tapes of the interviews are
available to researchers, as are electronic transcripts
in most cases. A few interviews are restricted and
require permission to use.
Below is an excerpt from
the Thompson-Lorenz transcript looking
back at the earliest days of NCAR. For more information
on TRIP, including interview abstracts, see the Archives’ oral
history website (www.ucar.edu/archives/coll-oralhist.shtml)
or contact NCAR archivist Diane Rabson
(rabson@ucar.edu, 303-497-8508).
Thompson: Well, let’s take
a long leap. When I came to NCAR in the summer of
1961, you were also here. As I recall, you and Eric
Kraus [a long-time researcher at the universities
of Miami and Colorado] were working together on some
aspects of air-sea interaction. I don’t recall
what came out of that, and I was curious to know
how you came together at NCAR. Was it through Walt
Roberts’ invitation?
[Walt Roberts was the founding director
of NCAR and UCAR.]
Lorenz: Well, we came together
at NCAR—I think
we came together separately as he probably
came through Walt’s invitation, as I did, but
it wasn’t
any joint thing. We knew each other fairly
well because we’d done a good deal of skiing
together in the East. I never really got involved
in air-sea interaction, but I was working on small
numerical models a good deal at that time. This is
what Eric needed for his air-sea work, so I guess
his contribution was the air-sea theory and my contribution
was the numerical model to look at it with.
Thompson: What was the specific
problem?
Lorenz: I’ve sort of forgotten that there were
two papers we finally wrote there. One of them involved
monsoonal circulations and the theory of that, which
I don’t think had too much oceanography in
that. I’ve sort of forgotten just what was
the main theme of the other one. I’m not sure
that it had too much to do with the sea.
Thompson: Had you previously been
in Boulder?
Lorenz: I first came to Boulder in 1956
for a solar weather seminar that
Walt Roberts organized, and there were
about a half dozen or more meteorologists
and some more number of astronomers and
some more number of geophysicists and so forth. We
had prepared papers to give. I gave one on the theory
of the general circulation. Following that, we had
discussions as to how the solar weather relations
might take place and so forth, and this was the subject
matter of a six-week seminar. I’m
not sure that we settled much as far
as solar relations. It was broadening
in that it provided a good contact with people in
other areas of geophysics, and I also met a lot of
people whom I’d only known by
sight before, became pretty well-acquainted
with them here. These included Hans Panofsky
[Pennsylvania State University], who
was at the seminar.
Thompson: So you have been coming
to Boulder more or less off and on for thirty years—
Lorenz: No, I didn’t get back here again until
1961, at least not professionally. I
think we drove through once. That was the year when
we were at the old armory down near the university,
and that was a real nice place. I think the entire
NCAR was in there, and there was something like twelve
scientists—that’s
how big NCAR was in those days.
Thompson: It’s curious. It seems to me that
the spirit of NCAR was better when we were working
in non-institutional surroundings.
Lorenz: I’ve always tended to think of Cockerell
Hall days as the golden age of NCAR. [Before the
Mesa Lab was completed in 1967, Cockerell Hall, a
former women’s dormitory at the University
of Colorado in Boulder, was pressed into service
as offices for both summer and permanent staff.]
It was a wonderful place to work, really, a long
hall with only three floors and a social room at
one end and you were pretty sure to meet all the
other people there and have a lot of conversations.
It was an excellent place for an exchange of ideas
and get acquainted with quite a few people there
in a way I probably wouldn’t have if we had
been in a building of this sort [the Mesa Lab], arranged
vertically. ♦
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