SVERDRUP

NORWAY (see also List of Individuals)

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15.11.1888 Sogndal/N - 21.8.1957 Oslo/N

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Harald Ulrik Sverdrup gained his PhD title from the University of Oslo in 1917 after having been from 1913 to 1917 a research associate in oceanography and in meteorology at Oslo University from 1911 to 1913; he stayed then until 1917 at the University of Leipzig, Germany. He was appointed professor of meteorology at the Bergen University in 1926 and in 1931 took over as head the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla CA. Sverdrup was from 1936 until retirement in 1948 professor of geophysics at the Norsk Polarinstitutt in Oslo. He was awarded the William Bowie Medal from the American Geophysical Union AGU in 1951, among many other decorations.

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Sverdrup was in 1931 the scientific director of the Nautilus Expedition and from 1949 to 1952 he organized the English-Scandinavian Expedition to Antarctica. His first expedition led him in 1922 with the Maud during a two years period to the North Siberian Shelf. He found in collaboration with Malmgren the differing interrelationship of wind travel and ice drift as between summer and winter. In collaboration with Hjalmar Dahl (1881-1957), he designed a remarkable current meter, and he pursued under arduous conditions his studies on the hydrodynamics of tides occurring in the shallow waters of the shelf. Among his many books, the 1942 work on the oceans in relation to the physics, the chemistry and to biology is certainly the most outstanding.

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_{Aliverti, G. (1975). Sverdrup, Harald Ulrik. Scienziati e tecnologi 3: 38-39. Mondadori: Milano. Anonymous (1958). Prof. Harald U. Sverdrup. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 84(3): 89-90.}

_{Cattell, J., Cattell, J., eds. (1948). Sverdrup, Harald Ulrik. American men of science: 2439.}

_{Science Press: New York.}

_{Devik, O. (1958). Harald U. Sverdrup. Norske Videnskaps-Akademi Årbok: 48-73, with bibliography. P}

_{Fleming, R.H. (1951). 13 Award of the W. Bowie Medal. Trans. AGU 32(3): 337-338. P}

_{Sverdrup, H.U. (1916). Druckgradient, Wind und Reibung an der Erdoberfläche. Annalen Hydrographie und Maritime Meteorologie 44: 413-427.}

_{Sverdrup. H.U. (1942). Oceanography for meteorologists. Prentice Hill: New York.}

_{Sverdrup, H.U., Johnson, M.W., Fleming, R.H. (1942). The oceans, their physics, chemistry and general biology. Prentice Hall: New York. http://www.tos.org/oceanography/issues/issue_archive/issue_pdfs/16_3/16.3_inman.pdf P}