ERTEL

GERMANY (see also List of Individuals)

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24.3.1904 Berlin/D - 2.7.1971 Berlin/D

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Hans Ertel graduated from Berlin University as a meteorologist in 1932, continued there as an assistant, then from 1938 as a Lecturer and from 1941 as a professor. He moved in 1942 to Vienna at Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik and was appointed in 1943 professor and director of that Institute at Innsbruck University. He returned to the Humboldt University in Berlin to take over the same position to stay there all through his career.

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Until the end of World War II, Ertel was mainly interested in the physics of the hydrosphere, such as questions in atmospheric circulation and turbulence, mathematical methods for weather prediction and meteorology in general. His 1938 book is a summary of these researches. Later works were directed towards the discharge characteristics of rivers, fluvial erosion and accumulation of sediment, the bar formation in rivers and the kinematics of moving dunes, and coastal processes including geomorphologic processes in the surf zone. He reinvestigated also problems of his earlier days, such as seiches in lakes, an expansion of the drift theory of Vagn Walfrid Ekman (1874-1954) and the evaporation of precipitation under the effect of turbulence. Ertel was also the editor of various scientific journals, namely Acta Hydrophysica from 1949, Zeitschrift für Meteorologie, and Pure and Applied Geophysics. He was a Member of Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften Berlin, Kungliga Vetenskaps Societeten Uppsala and Corresponding Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna. He was awarded the Süring Medal in Gold from the German Meteorological Society and Vaterländischer Verdienstorden in silver and gold from the German Democratic Republic.

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_{Ertel, H. (1931). Zur Theorie der atmosphärischen Turbulenz. ZAMM 11(1): 20-26.}

_{Ertel, H. (1938). Methoden und Probleme der dynamischen Meteorologie. Springer: Berlin. Ertel, H. (1942). Ein neuer hydrodynamischer Wirbelsatz. Meteorologische Zeitschrift 59(9): 277-281; 59(12): 385-387.}

_{Ertel, H. (1963). Äquivalente Wirbel-Differentialgleichungen der Hydrodynamik: Implizite Darstellung der hydrodynamischen Wirbelgleichungen. Akademie-Verlag: Berlin.}

_{Mauersberger, P. (1972). Dem Gedenken an Hans Ertel. Acta Hydrophysica 17: 69-76. P}

_{Poggendorff, J.C. (1936). Ertel, Hans. Biographisch-Literarisches Handwörterbuch 6: 675; 7a: 525-527; 8: 1046-1048. Verlag Chemie: Leipzig, Berlin, with bibliography.}

_{Schröder, W., ed. (1991). Geophysical hydrodynamics and Ertel's potential vorticity. IAGA: Bremen-Roennebeck.}