Carl Wunsch

Carl Wunsch was the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physical Oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, until he retired in 2013. He is known for his early work in internal waves and more recently for research into the effects of ocean circulation on climate.

Career

Wunsch received his Ph.D. in Geophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1966. He began teaching there in 1967, achieving tenure in 1970, and was named Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physical Oceanography in 1976.

Climate change

Wunsch was one of the scientists interviewed in the controversial documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, but he complained that his views were grossly distorted by context.

Selected honors

1978 - Member, National Academy of Sciences 1979 - Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1981-1982 - Fulbright Scholar 1990 - Maurice Ewing Medal, American Geophysical Union and U.S. Navy 2000 - Henry Stommel Research Award, American Meteorological Society 2002 - Foreign Member, Royal Society of London 2003 - Member of the American Philosophical Society 2006 - William Bowie Medal, American Geophysical Union 2021 - Prince Albert I Medal (IAPSO) (IAPSO list of medal winners) 2025 - BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the category "Climate Change".

Selected publications Carl Wunsch, Discrete Inverse and State Estimation Problems, 2006. Carl Wunsch, The Ocean Circulation Inverse Problem, 1996. Walter Munk, Peter Worcester, and Carl Wunsch, Ocean Acoustic Tomography, Cambridge University Press, 1995.