Ocean acoustic tomography from a stormy start to an uncertain future

Abstract

This is the story of the marriage of two disciplines: physical oceanography and ocean acoustics. It was a marriage of convenience, but with mutual respect, even love. I have spent the first thirty happy years of my career without much contact with acoustics, so it was a late learning experience. This is a personal account, with no claim of historical accuracy and completeness. I have relied largely on my increasingly leaky memory. But I have tried to capture some of the spirit underlying the developments and discoveries of the last half-century. © 2006 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc., All rights reserved.