Edward N(orton) Lorenz - Work, Publications

Meteorologist, born in West Hartford, Connecticut, USA. Working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1946, he was the first to describe what is known as ‘deterministic chaos’ as a shaper of weather, and was the originator of the term ‘the butterfly effect’ - the flapping wings of a butterfly in China could alter the weather over America a few days later. Among other major meteorology awards, he received the 1991 Kyoto Prize.

Edward Norton Lorenz (born May 23, 1917) is an American mathematician and meteorologist, and an early pioneer of the chaos theory.

Lorenz was born in West Hartford, Connecticut.

During World War II, he served as a weather forecaster for the United States Army Air Corps.

After his return from the war, he decided to study meteorology, in which he earned two degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he later was a professor for many years.

Professor Emeritus at MIT since 1981, Lorenz has received many awards for his work, among which:

1969 Carl Gustaf Rossby Research Medal, American Meteorological Society. 1973 Symons Memorial Gold Medal, Royal Meteorological Society.

Lorenz still comes to his office on the 16th floor of the Green Building most days each week.

Work

Lorenz built a mathematical model of the way air moves around in the atmosphere.

As Lorenz studied weather patterns he began to realize that the weather did not always change as predicted.

Lorenz went on to explore the underlying mathematics and published his conclusions in a seminal work titled Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow, in which he described a relatively simple system of equations that resulted in a pattern of infinite complexity, the Lorenz attractor.

Publications

1955 Available potential energy and the maintenance of the general circulation.