Voices of Science

Michael McIntyre (1941-), mathematician, has spent most of his career at the University of Cambridge in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, where he has developed understanding of the fluid dynamics of the atmosphere, especially the stratosphere. Among his achievements are the clarification of how a process called 'gyroscopic pumping' drives the global-scale stratospheric circulation in which the'ozone hole' is formed, and the discovery (with Tim Palmer) of the world's largest breaking waves (in the stratosphere) by mapping distributions of a property of the atmosphere called ‘potential vorticity’. More recently, he has worked on fluid dynamics of systems beyond the Earth, including the Sun’s interior and ‘jets’ on Jupiter. Michael’s many other research interests, detailed in a substantial personal website, include musical acoustics, perception psychology and lucid writing, and what's simple about the Earth's climate system.