Скачать или смотреть John van Leer, Rosenstiel: My Life - So Far

COMPASS 2025-10-01: John van Leer, Rosenstiel School
"My Life as an Oceanographer, Engineer & Advocate – So Far
A Life of Adventure, Options, Branchpoints & Agency"

As I plan for the next 20 years of my – all-electric – robotically assisted life, it's time to reflect upon my previous 85 years. I grew up during WW2 before TV, web, or AC, with Victory Gardens and Gold Star Mothers and Wives. By 4, I knew I would be a scientist or engineer – thanks Smithsonian. I attended National Geographic Lectures at 7. By 14, I designed and built a homemade SCUBA (Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus) and had my first tank filled at WHOI. By 15, I was an apprentice machinist. At 16, I was the youngest Fuller Brush Salesman. In high school I raised tropical fish and built drag racing cars commercially.

I graduated Case BSME '62, worked on Reentry Inertial Guidance System design / testing at MIT Instrumentation Lab, MINUTEMAN-MIRV for 3.5 years. I graduated from MIT–WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography '71, studying Shear & Density Gradients in Thermocline Microstructure under Henry Stommel. For the following 51 years, I was in the RSMAS faculty, designing, building, and using the first robotic oceanographic profilers – Cyclesondes, including solar-powered telemetry. As an observational oceanographer, I participated in multiple West Florida Shelf Experiments, CUEA (Coastal Upwelling Ecosystems Analysis) experiments – two in Oregon and two in Peru – and tropical oceanic observations during the Global Atmospheric Research Program's Atlantic Tropical Experiment (GATE). I participated in six months of under-ice observations in the Marginal Ice Zone Experiment (MIZEX) and the Coordinated Eastern Arctic Experiment (CEAREX) during the Cold War, as well as an over-winter under-ice study of the roll structure in the bottom boundary layer near Copper Harbor in Lake Superior.

As UM faculty, I taught over a hundred graduate students and over a thousand undergraduate students, with first-hand knowledge gained during four and a half years at sea and two decades of lobbying the US Congress for carbon pricing legislation. I served as Vice Chair of the School Council during the Berman years and Chair of the Marine Committee and UNOLS Representative. I also headed the Calanus Replacement Committee during the Rosendahl Deanship, helping raise $0.5M from the Nason Foundation to construct an efficient catamaran ship with the first robotic motion isolation system, described in my first COMPASS Seminar.