the Royal Frederick University
Who did Vilhelm Bjerknes work for from 1926 to 1932?
Vilhelm Bjerknes Vilhelm Friman Koren Bjerknes ( ; 14 March 1862 – 9 April 1951 ) was a Norwegian physicist and meteorologist who did much to found the modern practice of weather forecasting . He formulated the primitive equations that are still in use in numerical weather prediction and climate modeling , and he developed the so-called Bergen School of Meteorology , which was successful in advancing weather prediction and meteorology in the early 20th century . Life and career . Born in Christiania ( later renamed Oslo ) , Bjerknes enjoyed an early exposure to fluid dynamics , as assistant to his father , Carl Anton Bjerknes , who had discovered by mathematical analysis the apparent actions at a distance between pulsating and oscillating bodies in a fluid , and their analogy with the electric and magnetic actions at a distance . Apparently no attempt had been made to demonstrate experimentally the theories arrived at by the older professor until Vilhelm Bjerknes , then about 17 or 18 years of age , turned his mathematical knowledge and mechanical abilities to the devising of a series of instruments by which all the well-known phenomena of electricity and magnetism were illustrated and reproduced by spheres and discs and membranes set into rhythmic vibration in a bath containing a viscous fluid such as syrup . These demonstrations formed the most important exhibit in the department of physics at the Exposition Internationale dÉlectricité held in Paris in 1881 , and aroused greatest interest in the scientific world . Vilhelm Bjerknes became assistant to Heinrich Hertz in Bonn 1890–1891 and made substantial contributions to Hertz work on electromagnetic resonance . He succeeded in giving the explanation of the phenomenon called multiple resonance , discovered by Sarasin and De la Rive . Continuing his experiments at the University of Christiania ( 1891–1892 ) , he proved experimentally the influence which the conductivity and the magnetic properties of the metallic conductors exert upon the electric oscillations , and measured the depth to which the electric oscillations penetrate in metals of different conductivity and magnetic permeability ( the skin effect ) . Finally , in 1895 he furnished a complete theory of the phenomenon of electric resonance , involving a method of utilizing resonance experiments for the determination of the wavelengths , and especially of the damping ( the logarithmic decrement ) of the oscillations in the transmitter and the receiver of the electric oscillations . These methods contributed much to the development of wireless telegraphy . His papers on electric oscillations were published in Annalen der Physik ( 1891–1895 ) . In 1895 , he became professor of applied mechanics and mathematical physics at the University of Stockholm where he had been lecturer since 1893 . There he elucidated the fundamental interaction between fluid dynamics and thermodynamics . His major contribution was the primitive equations which are used in climate models . It was this work that inspired both V . Walfrid Ekman and Carl-Gustav Arvid Rossby to apply it to large-scale motions in the oceans and atmosphere and to make modern weather forecasting feasible . Bjerknes himself had foreseen the possible applications as early as 1904 . This attack upon the meteorological problems from a hydrodynamical point of view was after 1906 supported by the Carnegie Institution of Washington , D.C. , of which he became a research associate . Two introductory volumes , Statics and Kinematics , of a greater work , Dynamic Meteorology and Hydrography , were published in 1913 under the auspices of the Institution . In his 1906 work Fields of force , Bjerknes was the first to describe and mathematically derive translational forces on bubbles in an acoustic field , now known as Bjerknes forces . In his Vorlesungen über Hydrodynamische Fernkräfte nach C . A . Bjerknes Theorie ( 1900–1902 ) he gave the first complete mathematical and experimental exposition of the discoveries of his father , whose age and excessive self-criticism had prevented him from finishing his work himself . In a later book , Die Kraftfelder ( 1909 ) , he stated the same theory in a very much generalized form according to methods of his own . In 1907 , Bjerknes returned to the Royal Frederick University in Oslo before becoming professor of geophysics at the University of Leipzig in 1912 . In 1916 , he started the publication Synoptische Darstellung atmosphärischer Zustände über Europa . In 1917 , he founded the Geophysical Institute , University of Bergen where he wrote his book On the Dynamics of the Circular Vortex with Applications to the Atmosphere and to Atmospheric Vortex and Wave Motion ( 1921 ) , and laid the foundation for the Bergen School of Meteorology , which was not a literal school but a school of thought on how the practice of weather forecasting and meteorology should be undertaken . He was the originator of an improved and more scientific weather service , afterwards controlled by his son and collaborator , the meteorologist Jacob Bjerknes ( 1897–1975 ) . From 1926 to his retirement in 1932 he held a position at the University of Oslo . He was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1905 and of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1936 and a Fellow of the Royal Society . He was awarded the 1932 Symons Gold Medal of the Royal Meteorological Society . He died of heart problems in Oslo . In 1893 Bjerknes had married Honoria Bonnevie , who in earlier years assisted him much in his scientific work . Their son Jacob Aall Bonnevie Bjerknes also became a meteorologist . The craters Bjerknes on the Moon and Bjerknes on Mars are named in his honor . Further reading . - M.R . Friedman ( 1989 ) Appropriating the weather : Vilhelm Bjerknes and the construction of a modern meteorology . Cornell University Press . External links . - Family genealogy