The Richard A. F. Penrose Lecture: The Perfect Storm1

The author says he is so pleased to present the 2013 Penrose Lecture of the American Philosophical Society, my favorite society. He last spoke to the APS on Apr 21, 1972, reporting on studies by director Roberto Frasetto of the Laboratorio delle Grandi Masse about gates to protect Venice from freque...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inProceedings of the American Philosophical Society Vol. 157; no. 4; p. 369
Main Author Munk, Walter
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press 01.12.2013
Subjects
Beaches
Meteorology
Military exercises
Southern California
La Jolla California
Europe
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Summary:The author says he is so pleased to present the 2013 Penrose Lecture of the American Philosophical Society, my favorite society. He last spoke to the APS on Apr 21, 1972, reporting on studies by director Roberto Frasetto of the Laboratorio delle Grandi Masse about gates to protect Venice from frequent flooding. He needs to go back to summer 1939. He had finished his junior year at Caltech and was dating a girl who was spending the summer with her grandparents in La Jolla, so he applied for a summer job at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. By early 1942, Germany had occupied much of Europe and part of North Africa. He was assigned to work in the Pentagon and learned about plans for the first Allied offensive, an amphibious winter landing on the northwest coast of Africa. He went back to the Pentagon to look at the scant literature and found that typical winter waves at the proposed African landing site exceeded six feet.
ISSN:0003-049X
2326-9243