202 The Nature of the Atmosphere

When Ed entered Dartmouth College in 1934, he had long ago made up his mind to be
a mathematician. He graduated with a bachelors degree in mathematics in 1938 and entered Harvard to continue his study of math. With the outbreak of World War II, Lorenz
joined the Army Air Corps, who assigned him to attend army meteorology classes at MIT.
He learned to regard the weather as a combination of density, pressure, temperature,
three-dimensional wind velocities, and the atmospheres gaseous, liquid, and solid content.
The equations that describe this host of variables define the current weather conditions. The
rates of change in these equations define the changing weather pattern.
What Lorenz was not taught, and only much later discovered, was that no one knew
how to use these nonlinear dynamic meteorology equations to actually predict weather and
that most thought it could not be done. The equations were too complex and required too
much initial and boundary data.
Lorenz tried to apply the dynamic equations to predict the motion of storms. As computers were not commonly available in the early 1950s, most of this work was carried out
on blackboards and with slide rules and paper and pencil. Each calculation was tediously
time-consuming. Lorenz was never able to reach any meaningful results while handcalculating these equations.
In 1958 Lorenz obtained that Royal-McBee LGP-30 computer (about the size of a
large desk) to develop his sets of dynamic, nonlinear model equations. The results of those
computer simulations showed that tiny initial differences amplified over time, rather than
gradually normalizing out. If the model was right, weather was chaotic and inherently
unpredictable.
Several years of atmospheric testing convinced Lorenz and others in his department
that he and his model were correct. The atmosphere was a chaotic rather than a predictable
system (such as the system of interactions between inorganic chemicals, or the physical pull
of gravity). A drive to use a new tool to complete an old project had turned into one of the
most profound discoveries for the science of meteorology.
Lorenz will always be known as the person who discovered the true nature of the atmosphere and who thereby discovered the limits of accuracy of weather forecasting.
Fun Facts: Actor Jeff Goldblum played the role of Ian Malcolm in the
Jurassic Park movies. Malcolm is a mathematician who specializes in
the study of the chaos theory and refers to himself as a chaotician. A
central theme of these movies is proving that Malcolms chaos theories
are right.

More to Explore
Fuller, John. Thors Legions. Boston: American Meteorological Society, 1990.
Gleick, James. Chaos: Making a New Science. New York: Viking, 1991.
Lorenz, Ed. The Essence of Chaos. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1993.
. A Scientist by Choice. In Proceedings of the Kyoto Prize for 1991. Kyoto,
Japan: The Inamori Foundation, 1991.
Parker, Berry. Chaos in the Cosmos. New York: Plenum Press, 1996.

Quarks
Year of Discovery: 1962
What Is It? Subatomic particles that make up protons and neutrons.
Who Discovered It? Murry Gell-Mann

Why Is This One of the 100 Greatest?

First scientists identified plant fibers, then individual cells. Then scientists conceived of
atoms and molecules. In the early twentieth century, scientists discovered electrons and then
the existence of protons and neutrons. In each case, scientists believed that they had finally
discovered the smallest possible particle of matter. Each time this belief proved wrong.
The discovery of quarks (fundamental particles that make up protons and neutrons) in
1962 led science into the bizarre and alien quantum world inside protons and neutrons, a
world of mass with no mass and where mass and energy are freely exchanged. This discovery
has taken science one giant step closer to answering one of the most basic questions of all:
What really is matter made of? At each new level the answer and the world grows stranger.

How Was It Discovered?

As the nineteenth century closed, Marie Curie broke open the atom and proved that it
was not the smallest possible particle of matter. Soon scientists had identified two subatomic particles: electrons and protons. In 1932 James Chadwick discovered the neutron.
Once again scientists thought they had uncovered the smallest particles of all matter.
When particle accelerators were invented in the mid-1930s, scientists could smash
neutrons into protons, and protons into heavier nuclei to see what the collisions would produce. In the 1950s Donald Glaser invented the bubble chamber. Subatomic particles were
accelerated to near light speed and flung into this low-pressure, hydrogen-gas-filled chamber. When these particles struck a proton (a hydrogen nucleus), the proton disintegrated into
a host of strange new particles. Each of these particles left a telltale trail of infinitesimally
small bubbles as they sped away from the collision site. Scientists couldnt see the particles
themselves. But they could see the trails of bubbles.
Scientists were both amazed and baffled by the variety and number of these tiny tracks
on bubble chamber plots (each indicating the temporary existence of a previously unknown
particle). They were unable to even guess at what these new subatomic particles were.
Murry Gell-Mann was born in Manhattan in 1929. A true prodigy, he could multiply
large numbers in his head at age three. At seven, he beat twelve-year-olds in spelling bees.
By age eight, his intellectual ability matched that of most college students. Gell-Mann,

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