Roman Glazman

Roman Evsey Glazman, Physicist and Oceanographer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology (“Caltech”), died at the age of 57 at his home in Altadena, California on April 24, 2006. Roman had wide ranging interests in physical oceanography, specializing in interpreting observations in terms of modern physical theories of Kolmogorov, Kraichnan and Zakharov that describe turbulent energy cascades. He viewed the ocean as a unique fluid dynamics laboratory, where one could usually find the right ocean region to observe a wide array of fundamental nonlinear phenomena. His scientific philosophy was in the Landau and Lifshitz style of the country of his birth, seeking to understand broad, universal phenomena in terms of idealized models, complementing the more detail-oriented, Earth feature-specific large-scale numerical models.

Roman was born on June 26, 1948 in St. Petersburg, Russia (“Leningrad” before June 12, 1991). He earned his B.S. and M.S. in Oceanography at the Russian State Hydrometeorological University in 1971, during which period he also spent several months shipboard with an oceanographic expedition in the White Sea, developing a rapport with the Captain and crew, who did their best to educate him in the essential relation between vodka and quality of life. As was the pattern of civil service in the USSR, he was then sent to the Kamchatka peninsula for three fondly remembered years of “practice” as an Engineer-Oceanographer at the Kamchatka Meteorological Weather Station. There he developed marine forecasts of surface waves, tides, water temperature, salinity, and coastal currents. He also accompanied a number of scientific expeditions to the region’s volcanoes.

He returned in 1974 to St. Petersburg, and in 1975 moved to Moscow to pursue a PhD at the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology. However, his dissertation, on radio-interferential remote sensing of sea level in coastal zones, was not submitted as he was invited to work and complete his PhD at the University of Rhode Island. Beginning in 1980 he published much of his Russian research at the University of Rhode Island, and worked on acoustic properties of microbubbles. He was granted citizenship of the United States, and obtained a Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island in 1985 under the supervision of Melvin Stern, joining the JPL physical oceanography group that same year.

High resolution satellite altimeters provide the ability to view very large scale, long period, coherent ocean motions, including tides, ocean currents, internal gravity waves, and Rossby waves. Since these motions have distinct space-time scales, they may be isolated through appropriate filtering. Roman and his collaborators were able to construct spectra for these different motions, verify turbulent predictions, provide evidence for the existence of equatorially trapped solitary waves, and explore latitude dependence of ocean transport.

Roman also analyzed surface chlorophyll concentration, which is freely advected by ocean motion, inferred from ocean color data. Visually striking fractal patterns are observed due to the action of turbulent eddies and wave motions. Theory provides distinct predictions for each, and Roman was able to identify different ocean regions where each could be verified.

Remote inference of the depth profiles of ocean currents would be of incalculable benefit to ocean dynamics and climate studies. Roman explored the idea that the ocean-induced component of the magnetic field, generated by electrical currents induced by the Lorentz force acting on ions transported through the Earth’s static field, could be inverted to provide ocean current maps. Meaningful results require very detailed understanding of interfering magnetic noise processes, such as the solar wind, and its practicality lies at the edge of current technology and remains an open question.

Roman has had tremendous influence on a small core of theoretical physicists and applied mathematicians, who joined him in deriving quantitative supporting theories of his observational results. Roman worked at JPL through a number of periods of uncertainty and flux in NASA funding. Through it all, Roman remained true to his instincts for good, basic science. He was generous to a fault, maintaining financial support for co-workers even when it threatened his own support. It was this personal integrity and good humor, combined with his passion for science, that nurtured so many of his scientific collaborations and deep friendships, and made the sudden, unexpected end of his life all the more tragic. He will be deeply missed.

Signed:

Anna Roman Zueva
Founder of Roman Glazman Foundation, CA

Peter B. Weichman
BAE Systems, Burlington, MA

Benny Cheng
Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Meric Srokosz
National Oceanography Centre, UK

Vladimir Ivchenko
Alfred Wegener Institute, Germany

Gregory Falkovich
Weizmann Institute, Israel

Alexander Balk
University of Utah

Boris Galperin
University of South Florida

Anatoly Fabrikant
KLA-Tencor, San Jose, CA

Yury Golubev
Raytheon, Fullerton, CA

Michael Wilkinson
Open University, UK