Klaus Hasselmann - Professional Background and Climate Research

Professional Background and Climate Research

1955, University of Hamburg, Physics and Mathematics, Diplom. Thesis: Isotropic Turbulence.

1957, University of Göttingen and Max Planck Institute of Fluid Dynamics, PhD Physics.

1964 - 1975, University of Hamburg, ending as Full Professor for Theoretical Geophysics and Managing Director, Institute of Geophysics at the University of Hamburg.

From February 1975 to November 1999, Hasselmann was Founding Director of the Max Planck Institute of Meteorology, Hamburg. Between January 1988 and November 1999 he was Scientific Director at the German Climate Computing Centre (DKRZ, Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum), Hamburg. Currently he is Vice-Chairman of the European Climate Forum. The European Climate Forum has been founded in September 2001 by Prof. Carlo Jaeger and Prof. Klaus Hasselmann.

He has published papers on climate dynamics, stochastic processes, ocean waves, remote sensing, and integrated assessment studies.

His reputation in oceanography was primarily founded on a set of papers on non-linear interactions in ocean waves. In these he adapted Feynman diagram formalism to classical random wave fields. He later discovered plasma physicists were applying similar techniques to plasma waves, and that he had rediscovered some results of Rudolf Peierls explaining the diffusion of heat in solids by non-linear phonon interactions. This led him to review the field of plasma physics, rekindling an earlier interest in Quantum Field Theory.

“It was really an eye-opener to realize how specialized we are in our fields, and that we need to know much more about what was going on in other fields. Through this experience I became interested in particle physics and quantum field theory. So I entered quantum field theory through the back door, through working with real wave fields rather than with particles.”

Hasselmann has won a number of awards over his career. In January 1971 the Sverdrup Medal of the American Meteorological Society; in May 1997 he was awarded the Symons Memorial Medal of the Royal Meteorological Society; in April 2002 he was awarded the Vilhelm Bjerknes Medal of the European Geophysical Society.