Albert Defant


Albert Joseph Maria Defant was an Austrian meteorologist, oceanographer and climatologist. He published fundamental works on the physics of the atmosphere and ocean and is regarded as one of the founders of physical oceanography.

Early life and academic work

Albert Defant was born in Trient when this was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Defant went to schools in Trient and Innsbruck and then studied mathematics, physics, and geophysics at the University of Innsbruck in Austria from 1902. He received his PhD at Innsbruck University in 1906 with a thesis on raindrop sizes. He started working at the Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik in Vienna, Austria in 1907. He obtained his Habilitation at Vienna University in 1909 with a thesis on water level changes of Lake Garda.
Defant stayed at the Zentralanstalt until 1918, working mostly on problems of atmospheric physics, in particular in mountain ranges. He also gained experience in applied weather forecasting. During the later years of that period, he mainly focused on large-scale atmospheric circulation and on water level changes in lakes and adjacent seas, in particular tides and seiches.
Defant was Professor of Cosmic Physics at Innsbruck University from 1919 to 1926. During that time he was able to show that large-scale structures in the atmosphere can provide meridional heat transport from tropical to high latitudes.
By that time he was also rated as an expert on tides, and he was invited to participate in two cruises of the German survey vessel "Panther" in the North Sea in 1925 and 1926. Defant was Professor of Oceanography at the "Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität" and also Director of the "Institut and Museum für Meereskunde" in Berlin from 1926 to 1945. This institute was the leading institution of marine research in Germany at that time.
The famous German Meteor expedition had been started in 1925. The chief scientist Alfred Merz unfortunately died in Buenos Aires in 1925, and Albert Defant took over the task of Merz from 1926 to 1927.
His later work in Berlin focused on the physics of the ocean, in particular on the upper ocean and its boundary to the atmosphere. International relations were important for him, particularly to Scandinavian scientists. These contacts were interrupted by World War II. Defant stayed in Berlin until the bomb strikes stopped the scientific work. The institute’s library had been evacuated to Wunsiedel in central Germany, and Defant did some teaching in Vienna and scientific work in Wunsiedel until the end of the war.
The University of Innsbruck offered him the Chair of Meteorology and Geophysics in 1945, and he was Professor and Director of the Institute for Meteorology and Geophysics at Innsbruck University until 1955. He accepted a visiting appointment at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography of the University of California in San Diego in 1949-1950. He was Rektor of Innsbruck University in 1950-1951.
After his retirement in 1955 he repeatedly worked as visiting professor, during 1952-1956 at the University of Hamburg, Germany, and during 1956-1958 at the Free University of Berlin. Between these stays he was also hosted by the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1957-1958.

Family

Albert Defant was married to Maria Krepper in 1909, and the couple had three children. The meteorologist Friedrich Defant is his son. His wife died in 1949, and he married Maria Theresia Schletterer in 1952.

Awards