Lorenz Magaard

Lorenz Magaard (born May 21, 1934 in Wallsbüll, Germany) is a German-American mathematician and oceanographer. He made essential contributions to the theory of ocean waves and earned particular credit for organizing education and research.

Lorenz Magaard attended school in Flensburg from 1944 to 1955 and then studied mathematics and physics at the University of Kiel. He received the degrees of Diplom in 1961 and Dr.rer.nat. in 1963 at this university. He joined the Institute of Marine Research (German: Institut für Meereskunde; see de:GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel) at Kiel University as research scientist in 1961, as lecturer (German: Dozent) from 1969 and as Professor of Oceanography from 1972. He moved to the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, USA, in 1975 and has been a Professor of Oceanography there to this date, since 2009 as Emeritus Professor.

After the start in mathematics with a doctoral thesis on the embedding of Riemannian spaces into Einstein spaces and conformally-euclidean spaces, the theory of ocean waves was in the focus of most of Magaard’s ensuing research. During his work in Kiel, the dominating topics were internal wave research in the stratified Baltic Sea and their generationand the seiche system in the Baltic Sea. After moving to Honolulu, wave studies were extended to other regions. Other research concerned the eddy (fluid dynamics) energy in the oceanand shear flow instabilities in the western Pacific Ocean. His publications comprise 7 contributions to books and 38 articles in refereed journals. In teaching, both in Kiel and Honolulu, he dealt with surface and internal waves in the ocean, the tide, turbulence and dimensional analysis. He added the topic of ocean governance at the University of Hawaii.

At the University of Hawaii:

Chair, Graduate Field of Study in Oceanography, 1984 - 1990

Chair, Department of Oceanography, 1984 – 1990

Acting Associate Dean, School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), 1989 – 1991

Acting Dean, SOEST, 1999

Associate Dean, SOEST, 1992 – 2000

Director of Education, Marine Bioproducts Engineering Center, 2000 – 2001

Chair, Department of Oceanography, 2005 – 2006

Director, International Center for Climate and Society, from 2003

Executive Associate Director, International Pacific Research Center (IPRC), 1998 – 2008

Liège University Medal, Liège, Begium, 1973

PACON (Pacific Congress on Marine Science and Technology) Service Award, 1998; PACON International Award, 2000; PACON Fellow Award, 2007

Fellow, Marine Technology Society, 2001

English translations of German titles are given in brackets.