Thank you. Yes. There were very few people who had had any training in oceanography, and of course it was totally unknown when I did that that a week later Pearl Harbor would happen. If somebody's here whom we know, we'll ask them to come. It wasn't a foregone conclusion. Yes, but that was not a natural sequence. It's not the most interesting subject in the world. One of the things I like about JASON is that it has as a whole had the courage to make decisions. Dr. Munk at his home in La Jolla, in San Diego, in 2015. And then I took a Master's degree in geophysics under Gutenberg who is a very well known geophysicist. I have no idea.

It's very informal. But my question was whether there were any JASON-like developments before JASON — whether you participated in discussions of how to advise government in such defense matters. There is the Defense Science Board. Well, it's a crucial question anyway, and how to get to it, that's hard. Moving on, what about technical tasks versus general policy questions within JASON? And you do not join JASON to improve your publication record. It was a young man, Hoiland; does that mean anything to you? Now, this comes much closer to your experience. I really didn't think about oceanography at all. The majority was the group that were members of JASON because that was the only science policy or science advice input that allowed a full participation in academic work at the same time, so that for them it was not so much of a springboard into other things as a means of doing both. College Park, MD USA,www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/4790.

But I came in the second year. You certainly will enjoy that. He was actually working on that when you came? It's sort of a mixture of electrical engineering and physics. I had learned, by accident almost, that there was to be an Allied landing in Northwest Africa. No strings. I was in the steering committee, then off ten years; then I came again three years ago and served my term, and I'm now off as of July 1 — as of today, I guess. Yes, that's true, but not as a coherent subject. I think you would get probably a better feeling for this thing that way than you might otherwise, or at least it would be a very good supplement. I think it was a kind of an original idea.

You talked about the — practically speaking — almighty steering committee. Yes, to come out of the ivory tower anyway. Let's see the date now — something like 35 years ago; I don't even know whether it's in here. I would have thought that if it were really important, somehow that would have seeped up into these kinds of things. Perfect.

I don't quite understand how the process works, but it's not very deliberate. It's interesting, in that respect, that when I spoke to Mal Ruderman he made a distinction between two types of JASON members. Gutenberg was at Caltech. It was a good paper, and it's gone in many many, many different directions since [Bibliography, #115]. I've heard about this terrible thing with the papers of JASON where they have disappeared essentially. And then many of the other people came in. Yes, I met him, and when I'd gotten through my Master's degree, I asked him whether I could become a student here. It wasn't so different. So that was a case when it became clear that acoustics people at the Scripps had really kind of formulated the problem in a poor way, and I really didn't know enough to translate what I'd done at Scripps on internal waves into an acoustic thing, and then Fred Zachariasen and I spent all summer trying to make that connection. It could have happened. Bill Nierenberg, whom you will see next, does think we should do that. Your tenure in JASON, has that been throughout the period? No. I went there because Harald Sverdrup had gone there, and I guess I kind of missed him. It's the insider-outsider problem, in a way — that you can serve more efficiently as a critical element by being part of the process than being entirely outside it. I think the way in which projects are actually eventually worked on is a mystery like the election of the Pope. Fred Zachariasen and I did the first job on acoustic scintillations, based on what I had learned about internal waves, and I think that was a pioneering paper.

It couldn't have been a nicer way to learn the subject. And so I had a brilliant career: I entered as a private and ended as a corporal! They were working on hose instabilities then. I did meet some of the people, and I'm always so glad I went.

It's my second wife. Yes, I will. His second wife, Judith, died in 2006 after more than 50 years of marriage. I think, very much so.

There have been members of JASON who have been specifically interested in that, of course. Hi, Judy, come and join us. I think the collaboration has been good. [Interruption]. And I think they were right. I, at the time, was unhappy at Scripps. In this country, has there been any other organization that you have competed with or collaborated with in particular? But I'm limiting myself to the first 10 or 15 years, in the first place, anyway. Oh dear! I think it's a very different thing. Well, it started out as a young and brash organization, and now the individual members are —, But they make a great effort to have younger people always come up after them. Do you remember the period approximately? His maternal grandfather, Lucian Brunner, was a prominent banker and Austrian politician. I probably asked you about what papers you might have, both pertaining to yourself, and your career generally.

Not much. I was really quite bored.

Yes, and that happened with a certain percentage of the craft. Yes, I hope.

It's definitely before my time. He's responsible for a lot of individual contributions. “We thought he would live forever,” Munk’s wife, Mary, tells the San Diego Union-Tribune.He succumbed to pneumonia at his seaside home near the University of California (UCSD), San Diego.

There's a huge number of people in industry and otherwise who are making a living on this, and I wish they were reduced by a factor of ten.

Maybe that's the way it works. I think that's a mistake. It was a different kind of group. It's on your list here I suppose, then. How common was that attitude at the time? Could you explain a little bit about what exactly it has involved for you in terms of broadening your field? Yes. It was the second year of JASON. I met Helland-Hansen. Mrs. That's different from being in favor of very public large amounts of fancy parties. Yes. Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, What kind of projects? She died, and then eventually for some reason I received them. Walter Munk earned a bachelor’s degree at Caltech in 1939 (the same year he became an American citizen), a master’s degree there a year later and his Ph.D. at the University of California, Los Angeles, for work done at Scripps.

The more general study will result in interviews that will be deposited at the Center, because it's really too broad a topic to write a monograph on, at least in a manageable time period. I think we're split on that. For example, when I studied the Bohr Institute, I found that George Hevesy, who was a physical chemist there, had a method very much like yours. I was then not connected. Well, I think there's a parallelism. I think you would find if you could attend — and they are classified — that they're excellent. I think there is a way of answering your question partially; we have not been particularly successful in getting mathematicians as members. I got to know him. The technique, also used in amphibious landings in the Pacific, was credited with saving the lives of thousands of soldiers and Marines. This Festschiff also contains Munk's bibliography, a copy of which is attached to this transcript. It wasn't like teaching quantum mechanics — Mr. Bohr and your kind of things. He was 101.

I did go to America at the age of 14, very young, went for a year to prep school in New York State, and then worked in the bank for some three years.

Sometimes, not always, but the first predictions don't always work out. How influential have we been? Now, in fact, in some ways, I think many of us have found out that academic work has gained rather than lost. I mentioned our report from 1967 or so. So in some sense, I would have thought it could work in England. Organizational structure, to the extent that there is one, how has that evolved in time? But I don't know if I'd be welcome, you know, with everybody. What about the briefers and people from the agencies? There is a type of physicist who finds that a great mental challenge. Another daughter, Lucian, who had been born with a heart defect, died at age 7 in 1961. Yes.

I started working on ocean tides, and he gave me some ideas, but there was no formal collaboration.

But in suggesting the problems. It was the response of John Wheeler and wiser people to a problem that they foresaw. and saying, "Ah, that's kind of interesting." And I must have been divorced about three years after Oslo; that should tell us. From then on I really refused any consulting other than that.

Well, it was my first real experience.

OK. Then you'll get a more balanced view. We used to do fewer projects, with more people working together.

I think that's really kind of interesting. Has anything been declassified, or can it be declassified, do you think, of your earlier JASON things? But it's occasionally a problem. If this interview is important to you, you should consult earlier versions of the transcript or listen to the original tape.

But when you see this; oh, various characters —. Somehow or other, by the time it ends, you find that there are some explicit pieces of work that have been done.

He and a colleague were given 10 days to measure the circulation of water in and out of the Bikini Lagoon before an atomic test there in 1946, and he witnessed it from a raft 10 miles from ground zero.

But there were sort of ten years between.

And notice that JASON has never really had a clearance problem, which is amazing, isn't it?

Oh, there is a term to the steering committee. I think I believed in the principle that university people should spend a fraction of their time on problems — go out, chicken! It was just not is way of thinking. It's for the party more than anything else, yes. Yes, so that's like the surf problem in the very early days. It's counter to our, I think, general taste — my taste, not everyone's — that we ought to do our job and keep our mouth closed.

But of course, a lot of these presentations are very technical.

I became interested in the rotation of the earth problems at about that time, and not in a very deliberate way. Fermi would have been ideal. It was very lucky. We had a good time with them. They went to his widow, Clary von Neuman, who then married Carl Eckart. Mrs. Did you have any connection at all with the establishment of JASON? There's somebody for the Navy, somebody for ARPA, someone for the Air Force, etc.