Edward N. Lorenz grew up in Hartford,
Connecticut, earning a bachelor's degree in mathematics from
Dartmouth College in 1938 and a master's degree in math from Harvard
in 1940. He went on to earn his doctoral degree in meteorology at MIT
in 1948 while serving as a weather forecaster in the U.S. Army Air
Corps during World War II. Lorenz was appointed to the faculty of the
Department of Meteorology at MIT in 1955.
Lorenz is best known for the first modern
scientific example of what later came to be known as chaos theory,
starting with his paper "Deterministic Nonperiodic Flows," [Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Volume 20, 1963, 130-141]. The title of the 1963
paper concisely summarized a fact which came as a surprise to many
scientists. It contains a numerical study of a simplified
three-dimensional atmospheric model now known as the Lorenz equations
with the property that arbitrarily small fluctuations are amplified
over time to produce large differences in behavior of
solutions. Though previous examples of chaotic behavior had been shown
by Poincare and Birkhoff - work which was well known to Lorenz - their
contributions had largely been forgotten outside of mathematics. The
existence of simple deterministic equations with chaotic behavior has
had far reaching consequences. In addition, the paper demonstrated
that a numerical study could be used to understand qualitative
behavior. The ideas have fundamentally altered both the approach and the types of questions
being asked throughout science.
Lorenz's work did not receive much attention until
the mid-1970's, when its importance was first recognized and
appreciated when it was circulated through the mathematical dynamical systems
community. However, he clearly
understood these consequences in 1963. He wrote "in view of the inevitable inaccuracy and
incompleteness of weather observations, precise and very-long-range
forecasting would seem to be non-existent." He later summarized these
ideas with accessible and appealing imagery in his 1972 American
Association for the Advancement of Science title "Predictability: Does
the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?"
Lorenz received many awards, including being
elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1975, receiving the
Crafoord Prize of the Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1983, and the
Kyoto Prize in 1991. He became an emeritus professor at MIT in 1987.
He remained active, finishing his final paper with a collaborator just
one week before his death. He is survived by three children and four
grandchildren.
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