Abstract
I AM just reading with great interest the important and excellent work by H. U. Sverdrup, M. W. Johnson and R. H. Fleming, "The Oceans: their Physics, Chemistry and General Biology" [Prentice-Hall, Inc., New York, 1942. See p. 652 of this issue of Nature]. I should like to direct attention to a lapse which I am rather anxious to have pointed out. On page 592 the first observation of internal waves in the sea is attributed to Helland-Hansen and Nansen. The fact is that such waves were discovered in the Great Belt two years before by the nestor of Swedish oceanographers1, the late Otto Pettersson—well known as the originator of the international organization for marine research—and he also proved their tidal periodicity. Furthermore, on page 600 reference is incidentally made to observations of internal waves in a Swedish fjord which Otto Pettersson is said to have carried out "during 2 months of 1909". As a matter of fact, these observations were continued over several years2, and—although particular theoretical conclusions which Pettersson inferred are open to serious criticism—the observations themselves are in their method by far the most exhaustive ever made.
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References
Pettersson, O., "Strömstudier vid Östersjöns portar", Svenska Hydrografisk-biologiska Kommissionens Skrifter, 3 (1907). Also in "Ueber Meeresströmungen", Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Meereskunde (Berlin, 1908).
Pettersson, O., "On the Occurrence of Lunar Periods in Solar Activity and the Climate of the Earth", Svenska Hydrografiskbiologiska Kommissionens Skrifter, 5 (1914).
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EKMAN, V. Internal Waves in the Sea. Nature 155, 669 (1945). https://doi.org/10.1038/155669b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/155669b0
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