clifford hiley mortimer. 27 february 1911 −− 11 may...

May 2010 11−−Clifford Hiley Mortimer. 27 February 1911

A. S. Brooks, J. W. G. Lund and J. F. Talling

originally published online June 15, 2011, 291-314, published 15 June 2011572011 Biogr. Mems Fell. R. Soc.

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Clifford Hiley MortiMer27 february 1911 — 11 May 2010

Biogr. Mems Fell. R. Soc. 57, 291–314 (2011)

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Clifford Hiley MortiMer

27 february 1911 — 11 May 2010

elected frS 1958

By A. S. BrookS1, J. W. G. Lund2 FrS And J. F. TALLinG3 FrS

1 4791 North Woodburn Street, Whitefish Bay, WI 53211, USA 2 Ellerbeck, Ellerigg Road, Ambleside, Cumbria LA22 9EU, UK

3 Hawthorn View, The Pines, Bongate, Appleby, Cumbria CA16 6HR, UK

the passing of Clifford Hiley Mortimer, shortly before the centenary of his birth, ended a scientific career that was as varied and versatile as it was long. few investigators of a natural environment—here that of lakes—penetrated so deeply and widely over the range of phys-ics, chemistry and biology. in this setting he won worldwide respect; he was ‘at home’ with personal relations, language and professional enterprise in Britain, central europe and North America. in science he had an ability to combine ‘hands on’ practicality with deep theoretical penetration. He could combine his science with historical essay, elegant draughtsmanship, the inspiration of students and the administration of a research institute. All these appeared in the first half of his life. He worked methodically and with tenacity of purpose, even in the vicissitudes of extreme age. in his nineties he published a major book centred on the phys-ics of lake Michigan, beside which lake he then lived. the near-final draft of another work, intended to inform students on water density within inland waters, was in existence on his death in his hundredth year.

EArLy LiFE

Clifford Mortimer was born in the county of Somerset, at the village of Whitchurch, close to Bristol, in southwest england. He was the elder son of Walter Mortimer and his wife Bessie (née russell). His father was a letterpress printer in a printing shop, his mother a farmer’s daughter. Having experienced World War i and feeling the senseless loss of so many lives, his parents had become Quakers, as a result of their testimony of pacifism. Clifford was brought up in this faith, as was his brother russell. it influenced his attitudes and contacts throughout life.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbm.2011.0006 293 this publication is © 2011 the royal Society



294 Biographical Memoirs

in a magazine article a writer referred to his father as being an intellectual and a great reader. But when Clifford was about five years old his father began to lose his sight and quite quickly became blind. His mother then tried to make ends meet by growing vegetables, fruit and flowers and selling them in the village. She had a huge garden and did most of the work herself. Coming from a farming family, she had no career as it would be known today. However, she was very intelligent and had a job assisting the headmaster in the school in the village where she had lived as a girl. She was socially active, also in her churches, both the village church where she was a Sunday school teacher and at Quaker Meeting where she became an elder. yet she had much work to do with the children, house, garden, chickens and blind husband, and also had a horse and trap with which she went to Meeting. on Sundays she was strict about not working apart from cooking, and she read the Bible daily while resting after lunch. So Clifford and his brother grew up in a religious but very down-to-earth environ-ment, although intellectual matters were not neglected. Because the parents had managed to get scholarships for the two boys to Quaker schools, they had to leave home at an early age but with a prospect of career opportunities. russell became a historian and librarian, working later at leeds University.

the young Clifford was able at his school work. He had a good memory for literary quotes. He loved limericks and made quite a few up himself. Correspondingly he later loved the German Schuettelreime, playing with and turning around words. He liked classical music and used to play the clarinet in the school orchestra. A daughter of his has vague, uncertain memo-ries of him telling her he was head boy at his second boarding (grammar) school of Sidcot. the headmaster of this school was a chemist, and chemistry was Clifford’s favourite subject.

STudEnT: MAnchESTEr And BErLin

He entered the University of Manchester in 1929 as a zoologist. this was because the head-master of his school had a son who was a Colonial Service entomologist in Africa, and he recommended this as a good career. Mortimer chose the University of Manchester because it had a Quaker student hostel (dalton Hall).

By the time that Mortimer graduated, the bottom had dropped out of the market for applied entomologists. Moreover, in 1932 he had attended the first easter Course held by the freshwater Biological Association (fBA) at Wray Castle on the northwestern shore of Windermere. the course was led by W. H. (later Professor) Pearsall (frS 1940). this greatly stimulated his interest in freshwater biology. He made copious notes and took some pictures, which are in the fBA’s archive. Pearsall also had cause to note him.

While at school, Mortimer had taken part in an exchange between his school and one in Germany. this experience attracted him to the idea of studying there, but it was not the main attraction. He was able to get an Alexander Humboldt Scholarship and he had become espe-cially interested in genetics. Some of the leading work was being done at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-institut für Biologie in Berlin. He decided to work in the department of Professor Max Hartmann and to study the factors controlling the alternation of parthenogenetic and sexual generations in Cladocera (water fleas), where he could also make use of the culture techniques developed there (figure 1). He grew clonal cultures of several species of Cladocera, feeding them on clonal cultures of the alga Gonium tetras. Daphnia was the main genus that he used, and he studied its cytology and chromosome numbers, concluding that the reproductive cycle



Clifford Hiley Mortimer 295

was not controlled by an internal rhythm. the type of reproduction—either parthenogenetic or sexual—was determined by the external conditions. the thesis he wrote, in highly praised German, led to the University of Berlin’s conferring a dPhil on him. from this thesis arose an important paper on this subject (1)*. While at Berlin he met Hartmann’s niece, ingeborg Closs, whom he later married.

WindErMErE: ThE EArLy FrEShWATEr BioLoGicAL ASSociATion

He had now decided to become a geneticist. However, the Great depression made obtain-ing this or any other academic post very difficult. then he saw an advertisement in Nature (1 June 1935) for two research posts at the Wray Castle laboratory on Windermere of the recently established fBA. the salary in 1935 would be £150 a year. the post was for one year in the first place but with the possibility of continuing until 1942, when there would be a consideration of the future development of the fBA. Mortimer was particularly attracted by the request to state what kind of research the candidate would like to follow. in his own words: ‘that small salary was accompanied by a gift of much greater value, the freedom to follow where my curiosity might lead’ (unpublished note, 2006). in fact the salary was not

* Numbers in this form refer to the bibliography at the end of the text.

figure 1. Mortimer (rightmost figure) with colleagues in a laboratory of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut fűr Biologie in Berlin-Dahlem, 1933.




unusual for a post at that level. it also included free accommodation, but not board, in the research base at Wray Castle.

on 25 June he sent an application for the post. t. t. Macan, then a student at the University of Cambridge, also applied. Mortimer outlined a large programme of research, based on a continuation of the work he was doing in Germany, with the added possibility of extending it to or replacing it by similar work on rotifera. He and Macan were offered the two posts. the advertisement for the post included the following: ‘they should state whether they are prepared and qualified to undertake routine chemical and physical examinations of the lake water as a part of their duties.’ the infant Association could not afford to pay for a chemist. As it turned out, one result of this misfortune was good fortune. the fBA wanted the pioneer water analy-ses of its first research student, Penelope Jenkin, and those of Pearsall to be restarted. Macan made it clear in his application that he had limited knowledge of such work. Mortimer said nothing in his application. Neither wanted to do this work. However, Mortimer was asked to take on the task, probably because he had taken chemistry as the subsidiary subject for both his BSc and dPhil degrees and had attended the first fBA easter Course. to quote him again: ‘this unsought task and the inspiration of Professor W. H. Pearsall laid the foundations of a life’s study of the aquatic environment, in the course of which i initiated or developed others’ (unpublished note, 1981).

Mortimer took up his post on 1 october 1935. However, soon afterwards, he married ingeborg Closs (inge to familiars) and went to live elsewhere at a house in the countryside near Wray Castle. Many years later they had a family of two daughters, Christine and Alison (figure 2).

figure 2. Clifford Mortimer with his wife, ingeborg, and daughters, Christine and Alison, in 1962.




Within a year all interest in continuing his work on Cladocera had been lost. Setting up and carrying out improved routine analyses of lake water led him to ask questions about organic production. What happened to the organic and inorganic solids that entered the lake and the plant nutrients in solution, and to the remains of the organic production within the lake? He started an annual assessment of the biomass of phytoplankton and zooplankton (3) and a nitrogen budget for Windermere. He showed that the ‘water-soluble ammonia’ content of the superficial muds of the lake district lakes supported the evolutionary classification developed by Pearsall. He also went back to Germany to collect and survey the world literature from 1860 onwards relating to the chemistry of fresh waters, as well as relevant references to geo-chemistry and bacteriology. last but not least, he had begun to study the interface between deposits (mud) and the overlying water, especially the oxidation–reduction relationships. this was a common interest with Pearsall.

Suddenly a bombshell fell. on his return from Germany at the beginning of february 1937 he found a note left for him by the fBA’s Hon. Secretary stating that his studentship could be terminated in the autumn. Mortimer replied saying how and why he was so upset by this news and that he presumed the Council thought that his work was less important than that of others. He also spoke to the scientist-in-charge, r. S. A. Beauchamp, who must in turn have written to the Hon. Secretary. the latter then wrote a second letter to Mortimer, assuring him that he had a high regard for his work but adding, ‘i do not think that a couple of years’ research in one place followed by a shift is anything but a blessing.’ Pearsall told one of us (J.W.G.l.) shortly after he came to Wray Castle that it was suggested that either Mortimer or the algolo-gist (phycologist) should go. Without disparaging the ability of the algologist, it is difficult to imagine that any competent scientist familiar with their work and the aims of the fBA could suggest that Mortimer was the one whose services should be terminated. in his second letter the Hon. Secretary had written, ‘from what i know of our financial situation and plans, i think it likely that your work will have to come to an end by the autumn.’ there is no mention of this murky affair in the minutes of the fBA Council, its Scientific Advisory Committee or its financial and General Purposes Committee, nor of a financial crisis. there are two discussions in the latter committee about overdrafts but nowhere is it suggested that the fBA might have to reduce its staff. the sum of £150 a year was, to quote Mortimer (in a letter), ‘unlikely to break the bank’. indeed, once Pearsall knew of the possibility, there was little likelihood of Mortimer’s leaving.

the danger having passed, he now began to concentrate on what seemed the most impor-tant line to follow—the chemistry of the mud–water interface. the nature of the underwater soils was also of special interest to Pearsall, who had a student, r. d. Misra, studying the fac-tors that controlled the distribution of macrophytes in Windermere and so, like Mortimer, was interested in the chemistry of the soils they grew in.

in 1937 lt.-Commander farquharson from the Hydrographic department of the Admiralty made a detailed depth chart of Windermere, using the new method of echo-sounding—although he initially neglected the fact that the velocity of sound is different in sea water and in fresh water. Mortimer was keenly interested. later, using this technique and adapting it so that the work could be done from a rowboat, he was to make bathymetric charts of all the lake district lakes, eventually published with a freshwater correction (ramsbottom 1976). during the course of the work on Windermere, Mortimer noticed that there were apparently echo-sounding records from various levels in the deposits. farquharson said that they were in fact ‘reverberations’—whatever these might be. Mortimer thought that they might be something




more informative. He rammed a steel tube into the deposits near the Wray Castle boathouse, where much of the upper deposits had been eroded away. the core that he recovered showed that there were various kinds of deposit and that those nearest the stony bottom showed a horizontal series of striations followed up by clay and mud and then more striated material. He realized that these striations might be the same as the laminations (varves) found in the postglacial deposits of Swedish lakes, and that they and the other kinds of deposit were related to changes in climate after the end of the ice Age. during the next three years he oversaw the development of palaeolimnology (lake history) at Windermere (5). A postgraduate student, Winifred (later Professor) Pennington (frS 1979), then took over the leadership of what were to be major palaeolimnological investigations. these were first made possible by the construction of an apparatus by B. M. Jenkin (2), an engineer friend of the fBA, which took undisturbed cores; it was later replaced by the Mackereth corer.

Meanwhile, Pearsall and Mortimer had been determining the redox potentials at which soil, mud, underwater deposits and sometimes the water above them became anoxic during sum-mer. the latter did not happen in Windermere but did in the more organically rich esthwaite Water. this in turn led to the release of adsorbed phosphate and to other chemical changes.

Mortimer’s investigations of changes in the chemistry of the mud and the water above, both under natural conditions and under controlled conditions in the laboratory, were greatly aided by another apparatus invented by B. M. Jenkin—the Jenkin surface mud sampler (7). this enabled him to obtain an undisturbed mud sample with the overlying water. Mortimer obtained a grant for a potentiometer but made an essential conductivity meter himself. He inserted electrodes short distances apart down the deposits, analysing physical and chemical changes under both natural and controlled laboratory conditions. He now had a mass of infor-mation on the exchange of substances between mud and water in lakes. then an urgent need to write this up arose. He would soon be called up for war service. He just had time to do this, producing a classic twin paper in Journal of Ecology (6, 7).

WArTiME: rESEArch For ThE AdMirALTy

As a Quaker, Mortimer’s options were either to register as a conscientious objector, as his brother did, or to join the Quaker Ambulance Service. However, ‘because of my close obser-vation (in Berlin) of the evil Hitler gang, i felt that i must do all i could to prevent their takeover in Britain and europe’ (unpublished notes, 2006). it so happened that the physicist and novelist C. P. Snow had become the technical director at the Ministry of labour and had started a list of scientists available for the war effort. Mortimer filled in a registration form but was at first rejected, ‘probably because my wife ingeborg, a British citizen by marriage, came from Germany’ (unpublished note, 2006). However, eventually he was called up as a civilian scientist in the Admiralty Mine department. later he went on to other aspects related to waves and water movements, for example in relation to harbour defence and the d-day landings (Bence 2009):

i was in the team that prepared floating breakwaters for the Normandy landing, measuring waves inside and outside these breakwaters. there were huge steel caissons that were towed and then moored to the ring and so i got bitten by waves. … We put pressure recorders on the seabed and measured the change of pressure as the waves go over. We could predict when it would arrive and how strong it would be.




Mortimer could not have joined a better service in relation to his special interests and future research. it is also true that he was in a situation where his knowledge and abilities could be of most value to the war effort. He finally found himself in ‘Group W’ (W for waves) of engineers and scientists led by an oceanographer, and including physicists and mathemati-cians. Many rose to future eminence in science, such as a student from University College london called francis Crick (frS 1959); there was also George (later Sir George) deacon (frS 1944), Howard Penman (frS 1962), Michael longuet-Higgins (frS 1963) and tony (now Sir Anthony) laughton (frS 1980). ‘Group W’ later provided the nucleus of the new National institute of oceanography; Mortimer contributed his memories to a recent history of this body (laughton et al. 2010).

it should be added here that his action in joining the war effort in no way represented a break in his relationship with the Quakers. He continued to be a member of and close to the Quaker communities wherever he lived.

WindErMErE: ThE phySicS oF LAkES

At the end of the war he was offered a post in the Admiralty research Service but decided to return to Wray Castle, which he did officially on 1 January 1946.

He realized that the fBA needed a properly equipped workshop for its and his future needs. As soon as possible after being released by the Admiralty, he set out to find the necessary equipment from the war surplus made available by the government. He spent part of 1945 and a considerable part of 1946 and 1947 scouring the country to fulfil this task. He was often accompanied by W. H. (Sarge) Moore, who was to be a valued assistant in his work on the lake district lakes and loch Ness. He had the full backing of the fBA Council and its direc-tor, H. C. Gilson.

With Mortimer now becoming a physical limnologist, the fBA needed a chemist. Mortimer got to know the son of a local shopkeeper, John Mackereth, who had just returned from being a chemist on a Norwegian whaling ship. Mortimer realized that Mackereth was an extremely bright young scientist. When he heard from Mackereth’s mother that her son was going to be offered a post with imperial Chemical industries, he introduced Mackereth to Pearsall. He and Pearsall persuaded Mackereth that there was interesting work to be done on freshwater chemistry. As a result, the fBA obtained a most original and gifted scientist who, apart from important contributions to other aspects of the fBA’s work, made a major contribution to the development of palaeolimnology (see, for example, Mackereth 1965, 1966).

there now was an acute need for improved facilities in Wray Castle, especially for hydrology and chemistry. the fBA Council had plans for expansion in other directions as well, and bought a building and land at the junction of the south and north basins of the lake (ferry House). it took three years to convert this into a laboratory. As a result, Mortimer and Mackereth had to spend these years in cramped and unsatisfactory conditions.

Mortimer was also responsible for the fBA’s recruiting another very able scientist. When Mortimer’s interests turned to water movements he became the fBA’s hydrologist. Council felt that a physical chemist was needed to continue his work on the mud–water interface. on a visit to see Pearsall at University College london he went into the laboratory where eville Gorham (now Professor emeritus in the University of Minnesota, USA) was working and asked him whether he had applied for this post. Gorham said he had not because he was not a




physical chemist. Mortimer said that there was no reason why he should not apply, because his research was in a similar sphere to his own work on the mud–water interface. Gorham applied and was appointed, not as a physical chemist but as an ecologist.

Before the war, Mortimer had proposed a collaborative study by algologist, bacteriologist and chemist (the ‘ABC unit’) to study the development of the phytoplankton with special reference to the spring bloom. However, the necessary cooperation for this project was not forthcoming. After the end of the war, and before his return to Wray Castle, he discussed this possibility again. A short time after his return the bacteriologist left, but Mortimer was able to accomplish this idea with an investigation of the annual stratification cycle in Windermere (19) in cooperation with the new algologist (lund) and chemist (Mackereth).

Mortimer’s preparations for the study of water movements in Windermere were interrupted by the cold winter of 1947. However, this gave him an opportunity to study events occurring in the hypolimnion of frozen lakes (figure 3). Nevertheless, he needed observations on lakes that were frozen for a longer duration and were bigger and deeper. As a result of cooperation with Swedish scientists, he and Mackereth took part in a joint investigation on lakes in lappland in April and May, 1949. it was now possible to confirm in lakes as deep as 170 m what had been suspected from studies on lake district lakes, notably in relation to density currents.

Using the ample supply of Admiralty-surplus underwater cable and mooring chains of thermistor thermometers, Mortimer recorded in detail the development and course of ‘internal waves’ in the interface region between upper warmer and lower colder water (9, 14). He also constructed a laboratory model (figure 4) to illustrate such events, which he was to show were

figure 3. Clifford Mortimer (right) with colleagues John lund and Hilda Canter on ice-cover at Blelham tarn, english lakes, february 1947. (Photographer unknown.)




basically common in all stratified lakes subjected to wind stress (11). He demonstrated the effect of the earth’s rotation on internal waves by observations on the bigger loch Ness (13). Accordingly, he added rotary motion to his model lake by mounting the model on an apparatus consisting of a turntable, a bicycle wheel and a motion picture camera.

figure 4. Mortimer’s model lake, with surface blowers and stratified layers. (a) in reality, with example results, Mortimer operating. (b) As conceived by a colleague, t. t. Macan, when on exhibition at a soirée of the royal Society, 1952. (online version of (b) in colour.)

(a)

(b)




in 1953 Mortimer was invited to the annual meeting of the American Society of limnology and oceanography (ASlo) held at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin, hosted by Professor A. d. Hasler. After the meeting Mortimer embarked on a three-month lecture tour of North American limnological and oceanographic institutions, sponsored by ASlo. in the course of this stay he became aware of records of water temperature at domestic water intakes around the Great lakes, and began to collect as much data as possible from intakes at near-thermocline depth around lakes Michigan and ontario. Meteorological records of wind speed and air temperature were also obtained. this information enabled him to deduce internal wave motions in lake Michigan, such as internal Kelvin-type wave progression moving anticlock-wise along the southern and eastern shores of the lake. during periods of thermocline stability, temperature oscillations of much shorter periods, near the inertial period, were also observed (20). to quote Mortimer from unpublished autobiographical notes, ‘the interpretation of those then puzzling signals became my principal research interest from then on.’ this visit laid the basis for his extended later work on the laurentian Great lakes.

MiLLporT: ThE ScoTTiSh MArinE BioLoGicAL ASSociATion

in 1956, Mortimer accepted the directorship of the Millport, isle of Cumbrae, laboratory of the Scottish Marine Biological Association (SMBA). this post he held for nine years. He relished the opportunity to be involved again with marine work, having long been impatient with many obstacles to the integration of marine and freshwater work set by administrative rather than scientific considerations. this wider view was shared by a senior microbiologist on his staff, Michael droop, whose highly influential research on micro-algae had embraced marine and freshwater representatives. droop had also married a German national, Margarete, opening social possibilities with the Mortimer family at Millport. Nevertheless, ingeborg did not readily take to life on the small isle of Cumbrae.

Mortimer had hopes of research on internal waves at the edge of the Atlantic continental shelf, but these were frustrated by the combination of director’s duties and the promotion and planning for the removal of the laboratory from the island to a northern mainland site that he chose near oban. there was considerable opposition to the change among his staff, but it turned out to be a great success for the future survival of the SMBA.

during this period his interest continued in water movements of the American Great lakes. investigations on these lakes, and especially on lake Michigan, were greatly enhanced during a sabbatical year (1962–63) as a visiting Brittingham Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. during that year he was able to apply spectral analysis (resolving predominant periodicities) to the lake Michigan data that he had amassed, and to add detailed information on temperature–depth structure obtained from repeated railway ferry crossings between west-ern and eastern shores (22, 23, 25) .

during his sabbatical year a major US federal research programme established the first large-scale multi-station network of current meters and temperature recorders in lake Michigan. data from this network provided him with more insight into whole-basin motions of the lake. extensive depression of the thermocline (downwelling) along one shore would produce an upwelling of cold thermocline-depth water on the opposite shore. Clear evidence of this phenomenon was later frequently revealed in summer thermal satellite images of the Great lakes (figure 5).




univErSiTy oF WiSconSin-MiLWAukEE: GrEAT LAkES rESEArch

the lure of lake Michigan and the opportunities for research in Wisconsin led Mortimer in 1966 to accept a position as distinguished Professor of Zoology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the directorship of a newly formed Center for Great lakes Studies. the decision to leave the SMBA laboratory at Millport was not an easy one, as seen from his correspondence with colleagues seeking advice on such a move. But the decision was finally made, and in September 1966 the Millport band piped the Mortimer family aboard a steamer headed for Greenock where they boarded the Cunard liner HMS Carinthia bound for Montreal, Canada. from there the family embarked on a scenic driving tour west to their new home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

figure 5. Mortimer at a class in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1980, demonstrating a satellite photo-graph of lake Michigan.




on arrival Mortimer set about gathering staff, equipment and a ship for the new centre. Among his early appointments was Alfred M. Beeton, who came to Milwaukee from Michigan to become a professor of zoology and the Associate director of the centre. together Mortimer and Beeton recruited faculty affiliates from academic departments in the natural sciences, engineering and economics to form the core of the interdisciplinary centre. A government sur-plus ship was acquired, refitted for research and christened the Neeskay. Space and staff were also allocated for an instrument and electronics shop, a cartography office and a library.

While the development was under way, Mortimer also became involved with North American professional associations. He was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1966 and President of the American Society of limnology and oceanography in 1970, and served as President of the international Association of Great lakes research in 1973.

His administrative duties and professional activities did not slow his research. He was instru-mental in organizing a joint US–Canadian international field year on the Great lakes (ifyGl, lake ontario 1972–73). Both US and Canadian governmental agencies were involved, as well as several universities on both sides of the lakes. there was a flurry of activity at the Center for Great lake Studies in Milwaukee associated with this programme. it involved graduate students and postdoctoral fellows collecting data on ifyGl cruises, analysing data and model-ling physical processes in lakes ontario (30) and Michigan. Mortimer, using the centre’s new instrument shop and personnel, developed a depth-undulating thermograph that could be towed by a research ship to and fro across the lakes. data in several of his publications relied on meas-urements obtained with this instrument. other publications arising from his work on the ifyGl programme at the centre include a series of reports that combine preliminary steps in analysis and substantial data archives in graphical form (for example (28, 29)).

He wrote in his 1991 autobiographical notes:

those reports illustrate my predilection for collecting long series of observations, in the hope that signals from ‘God’s Model’ may episodically emerge for testing man-made constructs. the occasional success of this strategy suggests that the surest road to the truth is one of iterative interaction of observation and theory, leading to mutual refinement.

AcTivE rETirEMEnT

in 1978 Mortimer retired from his administrative duties as director of the Center for Great lakes Studies, which freed him to focus on his research and teaching full time. A second retirement followed in 1981, but this time from his academic role; he was granted status of distinguished Professor emeritus. the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee recognized his contributions to Great lakes limnology in 1985 with the award of an Honorary degree of doctor of Science. Concurrently, he was granted life Membership by the American Society of limnology and oceanography. two years later he was granted a docteur Honoris Causa degree from the École Polytechnique fédérale de lausanne. in 1995 ASlo awarded him the lifetime Achievement Award, which was presented to him at the 1996 annual ASlo meeting in Milwaukee, where a special session was held in his honour.

in his ‘retirement’ he returned to earlier interests working with european and British col-leagues on the internal motions and biology of Swiss lakes. indeed, he exercised a strong




influence in the 1970s and 1980s on Swiss limnology. Swiss colleagues noted that he was a very hard worker but also lived life to the full. in his seventies, after a strenuous but beautiful hike in the mountains above lake Zurich, his younger friends were exhausted. However, his energy was undimmed, for, on returning to base that evening, he produced several sheets of scientific work to be discussed with his colleagues the following morning.

He also did not lose sight of the Great lakes: a paper examining internal surges in Green Bay, lake Michigan, was published with his former student e. J. fee (current editor of the journal Limnology and Oceanography) and a British colleague Norman Heaps (34). other publications reviewed the testimony of scientific ‘experts’ in a legal case involving pollution in lake Michigan (33), a review of physical limnological research on lake erie (36), and a joint paper that reviewed recent research on lake erie and perceived gaps.

When satellite images of the Great lakes first became available, Mortimer was one of the first to recognize the tremendous possibilities that they provided for research on large lakes (figure 5). He spent weeks reviewing tapes of images at the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) headquarters in Maryland, and published two papers on the whole-basin dynamics of spring-warming processes in lake Michigan.

in the 1990s the health of his wife, ingeborg, declined alarmingly. Although he was first able to give her the necessary assistance, he himself suffered a health setback when he became almost blind in one eye. this forced him to give up driving a car. Although help from good friends and the Quaker community was at hand, he finally decided to seek help for both ingeborg and himself by taking up residence in 1994 in the Milwaukee Catholic Home. ingeborg died on 25 January 2000. A few months after the memorial service, Clifford and his daughters scattered her ashes into the waves of lake Michigan. Clifford stayed on at the Home, but he suffered a stroke that limited his mobility to a wheelchair. His sight also declined considerably, a defect that he counteracted by use of a double lens for reading and wide-ruled paper for writing. His science was not stopped by his bad eyesight. He gladly accepted help from colleagues and invitations to local scientific seminars or lectures. He was always pleased when people visited him, and enjoyed talking ‘shop’ with his guests—or indeed about a host of other topics on which he was well informed.

in 2004, when Mortimer had reached the age of 93 years and had been retired for 26 years, his book Lake Michigan in motion: responses of an inland sea to weather, earth-spin, and human activities (39) was published by University of Wisconsin Press. With more than 300 pages and 187 illustrations, the book chronicles three centuries of observations of the Great lakes by native peoples, early explorers and contemporary scientists. the physical geography and geology of the basin is covered, along with chapters on the chemistry of sediments and water, ecology, human influences, and of course the internal motions of waves and currents.

Mortimer’s book combines some elements of a classroom presentation with a broader historical and social context on many of the topics covered, as well as providing a non-mathematical sense of the connection between the various hydrodynamic concepts and their manifestation in the lake. there are more than 260 black-and-white figures, many fascinat-ing historical photographs of the people, places and events related to the scientific history of the lake. royalties from the sale of the book were designated to support fellowships at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

He was not finished yet. in 2005 Mortimer co-authored a paper entitled ‘internal seiche dynamics in lake Geneva’ (40), and in 2006 (at age 95 years) another appeared, ‘inertial oscil-lations and related beat pulsations and surges in lakes Michigan and ontario’ (41). the latter




was based on data from 1963 that had waited for a time in retirement when the analysis could be conducted quietly without interruption. All the calculations were done on a hand calculator, and the figures were also drawn by hand, but properly lettered to satisfy the editor.

At age 99-plus he was still writing vigorously, trying to meet the deadline for his next work, ‘determinants of density and its distribution in lake waters, with historical perspectives’. Clifford did not meet that deadline. He died peacefully on 11 May 2010. At his request, his ashes were scattered on the waters of lake Michigan from his research ship Neeskay; his two daughters and several colleagues were aboard on that final cruise.

As i (A.S.B.) complete this section of the memoir, a paper entitled ‘the ecoresponsive genome of Daphnia pulex’ has appeared in the 4 february 2011 issue of Science (Colbourne 2011). it was ironic that, as Clifford Mortimer’s centennial was approaching, he was not here to appreciate this modern development of genetics; that would have been so interesting to him as he looked back to his doctoral research on Daphnia genetics published in 1935.

SciEnTiFic Work: dEvELopMEnT And WidEr SiGniFicAncE

Almost all of Mortimer’s research fell within the broad field of limnology (the science of inland waters), an envelope of specialities that bears the same relation to freshwater biology that oceanography does to marine biology. He began, in his doctorate work, as a zoologist. the small Crustacea—cladocerans or water fleas—that he grew in clonal culture at Berlin during the early 1930s were attractive microscopic objects, well known to limnologists as often important constituents of the plankton. they had distinct and often seasonal forms that reproduced either parthenogenetically or sexually, the latter often under adverse conditions, and posed wider bio-logical problems of genetic or environmental control. Mortimer was then especially interested in genetics, and followed configurations of the chromosomes; however, his experimental results (1) pointed to profound developmental differences under environmental control.

Back in Britain, his interests shifted to the controls of chemical quantities within lakes—‘lake metabolism’. these quantities included the comparative masses of phytoplankton and zooplankton (which included cladocerans), which he followed in Windermere over the year 1936 by vertical hauls of wide-mesh and narrow-mesh nets (3). Although the weighed catches were of poor discrimination and an incomplete census—he later described the project as ‘naïve’—it provided the only quantitative picture of phytoplankton–zooplankton succession in the english lakes until many decades later. He also had a wider interest in nutrient use and cycling by phytoplankton; this appeared in an early outline for Windermere (4), a review of fertilizers in fishponds ((12), drawing on much work published in Germany), and a later survey of the physical and chemical work of the fBA (17).

other chemical fluxes came from the lake’s inflows and its sediments. Giving attention to the former, he provided a pioneering nitrogen budget with an estimated contribution from the human population and incidentally the first reliable level-discharge curve for Windermere. over a complete year there was a net loss of nitrogen between inflow and outflow, which increased in lakes of greater nutrient content and fertility. this relationship, and the nitrogen budget of enriched lakes, were later to be involved in limnology worldwide.

His interest in lake sediments (2) was most productive in encouraging work by others on late-glacial and postglacial history (5), and in the seasonal controlling mechanisms of chemical exchange between sediment and water column. Pearsall introduced him to the significance




of oxidation–reduction (redox) potentials in soils and sediments (Pearsall 1938a, b), and he measured them over time and depth by platinum electrodes in the sediments of the productive esthwaite Water and in the microcosm of an experimental tank (6, 7)—the precursor of many future ‘models’, physical (8) and virtual, throughout his work. in both systems he demon-strated the critical role of change of redox potential linked to deoxygenation for accelerated net release of ionic solutes (including fe2+ and Mn2+) and correlated increments of phosphate from sediment to water. in the winter of 1940, esthwaite Water was frozen long enough for similar changes to take place, but to a smaller extent. the main reason was that, with ice cover, the wind could not cause water movements in the deep layer (hypolimnion). in summer, despite thermal stratification, wind action caused water movements in the hypolimnion. this led Mortimer to the largely neglected work of Sir ernest Wedderburn in the early years of the century on the ‘temperature seiche’. the link between phosphate release and deoxygenation was seen as a potential feedback encouraging increased organic production, although later work has disclosed other predominant controls, especially in more base-rich lakes (Golterman 1984; Brooks & edgington 1994). Mortimer’s work on esthwaite Water also provided details of inter-related physical and chemical variables over cycles of lake stratification, in winter and summer, that were rarely available at that time. further, he drew on his results elsewhere (for example on the rate of summer deoxygenation) to provide a quantitative seriation in english lakes ranging from unproductive to productive. the whole was widely seen as a landmark in limnology, and later was projected by him against the setting of the North American Great lakes (24, 26).

After wartime marine experience his now predominant interest in the physics of water movements led to work in five lake regions—of england, Swedish lappland (16), Scotland, central europe and the North American Great lakes. A major impetus came from a multidis-ciplinary comparative survey with lund and Mackereth of stratification—physical, chemical and biological—in Windermere over 1947 that was a unifying landmark in British limnology (19). during the fieldwork, strong wind–induced tilts of the deep temperature-density gradi-ent (thermocline) appeared that could be followed by prolonged internal waves at the density interface. these came to his attention from manual depth-sampling, but he later followed them by an innovative system of a vertical chain of suspended thermistors linked by long cable (obtained as war surplus) to the laboratory (‘there is a professional way to do anything’). there in a corridor an observer could see recorder pens that indicated temperature rising and falling in unison, with a period set by lake-basin characteristics. these oscillations or internal seiches had implications for water movements that he analysed mathematically (9) with help from a former wartime associate, M. S. longuet-Higgins. He resolved the period of these largely uninodal internal waves, making—by a mechanical analogue method—what was probably the first example of spectral analysis in limnology (Platzman 1981).

He made contact with l. f. richardson frS, a pioneer in relevant aspects of energy transfer within atmospheric eddies—and a fellow Quaker with relatives at Windermere. He was quick to emphasize the neglected wider implications of work by a Scottish pioneer, Wedderburn, in the early twentieth century. ‘one is left with the impression that hydrobiologists, to whom advances in the science of limnology have largely been due, have usually regarded Wedderburn’s ‘temperature seiches’ (in common with surface seiches) as an isolated phenom-enon of interest to physicists, but not to themselves. this view they must now revise …’ (9).

further generalization also appealed. He used his results and the literature to make a world-wide survey (11) of internal waves with increasing period in elongate lakes of increasing length, the longest being lake Baikal in Siberia. He long retained a special interest in this lake, at which




he later cooperated with russian limnologists. His personal recording took in loch Ness in Scotland, where he sought and obtained behaviour predictable from geostrophic (earth-rotational) effects (13). Contacts during visits to central europe from 1947 onwards led to the later coopera-tive characterization of internal motion in lake Geneva (lac léman) and lake Zurich.

Visits to the USA in 1953 and 1962–63, and perusal of local records (as of temperature at water-intakes fringing lake Michigan), extended by repeated transects of mid-lake with bathy-thermograph profiles, aroused a keen interest in water movements in still larger and broader lake basins (20, 38). there additional patterns dominated, other than that of the uninodal longi-tudinal seiche so conspicuous in narrower trough-like basins such as Windermere. to them he devoted most of the rest of his life, when from 1966 he was a resident at Milwaukee beside lake Michigan. in these movements forms of inertial motion were prominent, with circular or looping paths—resembling Kelvin waves near the shore and Poincaré waves offshore. His first published report from Milwaukee (23) raised expectation of a complex situation:

the observations and theoretical considerations combine to suggest that motion in the lake is likely to be a complex mixture of uninodal, trinodal, and perhaps higher nodalities of internal standing Poincaré waves, probably combined by internal progressive waves (particularly during periods of wind stress) and further complicated inshore by the presence of slow moving quasi-geostrophic boundary waves of the Kelvin type. these will impose a dominant shore-parallel component on the inshore currents, while the offshore currents, in summer, will be predominantly rotating, with intermediate patterns in the transition zone between the inshore and offshore regions.

A still earlier contribution (20) had expressed his expectations of ‘long waves in rotating basins’ exemplified in lake Michigan.

Mortimer also gave some attention to long-period waves at the water surface, which included classical surface seiches plus a component that can sometimes be related to internal seiches (35), and may have superimposed a Moon-induced tidal frequency that he helped to resolve in lakes Michigan (21) and Superior and in the African lake Kariba (Ward 1979). there could also be a restriction of marginal circulation by ‘thermal bars’ (Mortimer pre-ferred the term ‘thermal fronts’) in cold water near the density maximum of water at 4 °C. their influence on circulation in lake Michigan was discernible from satellite Color Scanner images (37). Progress in these fields was considerable during the post-1966 period of his residence in the USA, as can be seen from his several reviews of physical limnology in that time (27, 31, 32, 38). of these, illustrations in the more general review (27) have appeared in numerous textbooks and have helped many students; for long waves, his last, lengthy and wide-ranging review of 1993 (38) is especially notable.

in physical limnology he concentrated on periodic phenomena of motion—‘waves’ in the broader sense. imberger (1994) has argued that a variety of other agencies are really more decisive in determining motion and structure in water-masses, as in the upper mixed layer, although ‘periodic internal seiches and waves are of enormous importance in that they are a significant energy source for the mixing.’ Mortimer noted that in the periodic phenomena or waves, energy was concentrated around the highest and lowest frequencies, ranging from periods of a few minutes to several days. Some non-periodic agents inevitably figured in his work, and notably so in his early study (14) of the autumnal mixing or ‘overturn’ of Windermere North Basin, in analysis of the deduced consequences of convection in the ice-covered torneträsk lake in lappland (16), and in his ‘brief excursion into mixed-layer dynamics’ (18).




pErSonAL quALiTiES And inFLuEncES

Mortimer had the wide-ranging curiosity in the natural world that is common to most success-ful scientists. in him it extended to human affairs, both local and international. He was plunged at an impressionable age into the fast-moving affairs of Germany in the early 1930s, where the rising tide of Nazism accorded ill with his Quaker background. on one occasion he was challenged for his refusal to participate in a public Nazi salute. However, his respect grew for the German scientific tradition. He later commented on the proximity in Berlin of the great German physiologist and biochemist otto Warburg, with energetic working habits in mornings followed by riding his horse in a nearby park. Social links, his marriage and research coopera-tion developed thereafter—as with work on large lakes of central europe and in the activities of the international Association of limnology.

in him ideals of aims in science coexisted with a pragmatic assessment of actualities. thus his opinion of the progress of the fBA could be critical, and his scientific judgement non-conventional. once, he asked one of us (J.f.t.) to suggest for him a general subject appropri-ate for an invited lecture to university students. to the suggestion ‘the evolution of lakes’ (a Pearsallian topic hallowed at Windermere) he replied, ‘but i don’t believe in it’. on another matter received critically he added ‘but you can read all that in the textbooks’. on yet another, concerned with an apparatus and an appeal to the maker’s data, he replied, ‘but it is not the Maker’s data’. one day when at the fBA lunch he was asked by a visiting scientist (Julian rzóska, himself an uncommon character), ‘what are you eminent people doing?’ he replied, ‘advancing our own interests’—an answer received delightedly as exceptionally honest. He loved to welcome limnologists visiting from abroad, in the picturesque surroundings of the english lake district (figure 6).

in mechanical expertise he was practical in another sense. during the early days of the fBA at Windermere funds for science were in short supply, and he constructed pieces of apparatus

figure 6. Mortimer escorting a visitor (W. t. edmondson, stooping) in the english lake district. (Photograph by J. f. talling.)




for himself and others. examples were the conductivity meter used in his classic work on esthwaite Water, a depth-sampling bottle for bacteria, a sensitive torsion balance used by bacteriologists for direct counts from weighed glass capillaries, and his adapted version of the inverted microscope that brought to Britain a markedly superior method of phytoplank-ton counting, worked out in Germany during the 1930s (Utermöhl 1936). He could advise an Austrian visitor, in German, on the mechanical intricacies of her motorized scooter, and plan—on lunchtime walks—mechanisms of potential limnological apparatus with a simi-larly gifted colleague, John Mackereth. on such walks then youthful students such as John Colebrook and one of us (J.f.t.) also learnt much of the limnological background. Mortimer’s practical abilities led to a major role in the Methods Committee of the international Association of limnology and in several publications supported by that committee (for example (10)). in the mode of draughtsmanship they created diagrams of exceptional elegance, although often of difficult complexity for his students.

Shortage of funds in the early fBA included salaries (‘in those days you had to think twice about getting on a bus’), and probably initiated or accentuated in him a highly economical attitude to spending. it also encouraged personal inventiveness. A treasured story at the fBA concerned his gift of an old overcoat to his assistant eric ramsbottom, that after proffering Mortimer temporarily took back with a remark that he could see a good use for the buttons—which he cut off! later, as director of the SMBA at Millport, he encountered hostility from a senior scientist (Harold Barnes) when he criticized uneconomical packing arrangements alleg-edly used in the expensive shipping of a newly developed underwater television apparatus. Mortimer himself had an equable temper, was concerned with social niceties, and would go to some lengths to assist others, including students. But—as he himself recognized—he was occasionally prone to make a tactless remark, ‘so i am told’.

from early times he had musical interests, and became a clarinet player. As a student at Manchester he played in an orchestra that also included irene Manton (frS 1961) playing the violin. Manton later came to officially advise the staff of the Windermere institute where he was to work; two of us there (J.W.G.l. and J.f.t.) were formerly her students. At this institute a colleague—david le Cren—remembers a Saturday morning when the walls reverberated to the sound of Mortimer practising for a concert that evening.

in his career Mortimer was both influenced by, and had influence on, his contacts. As we have seen, his first major shift from biology to chemistry was due partly to opportunities opened at Windermere within the fBA, and partly to cooperation and inspiration from W. H. Pearsall. it is a tribute to Pearsall that he also inspired similar admiration in a zoological colleague of Mortimer’s, t. t. Macan, with an entirely different temperament and approach to aquatic ecology. Mortimer’s second major shift, from the chemistry to the physics of lakes, developed from his wartime expo-sure among physicist colleagues to problems of water motion and waves in the sea, as he later recounted (1981, 2006). When later he was the director of the SMBA laboratory at Millport, he persuaded the governing council that a major move of the station northwards would be of long-term advantage—including the possible study of water motion near the edge of the continental shelf. this move was highly unpopular with most of his staff established at Millport, but later played a large part in the survival of the laboratory as a component of the present-day Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) based near oban.

Within his work a keen interest in the historical roots of his subject is repeatedly demonstrated, and incidentally his broad perspectives. He greatly admired the work of the pioneer investigator of internal waves, Sir ernest Wedderburn (who he found was knighted for




services to solicitor practice in Scotland, not science, and whose brother was a distinguished mathematician). Many will agree with Platzman (1981) that

the most substantial single contribution to our historical legacy is Clifford’s wide-ranging, pen-etrating, and sensitive account entitled ‘e. A. Birge, An explorer of lakes’, an essay [(15)] con-tributed in 1956 to G. C. Sellary’s memoir of Birge. this i consider to be one of Clifford’s most valuable contributions. it is an impartial yet deeply perceptive analysis of the life work of a great scientist, and significantly raises the level of our understanding of limnology as a whole.

Mortimer’s work on large lakes differed from that of the classical Birge (and Juday) work cen-tred on numerous small lakes—‘lakelets’ to Mortimer (15)—of Wisconsin. in that, and most later work of American limnology, the large laurentian lakes had been relatively neglected; they offered an exciting challenge to Mortimer in the 1960s.

Mortimer had a considerable influence on acceptance of integrated freshwater science in Britain. to many, a major freshwater organization existed for work on the biology of freshwater organisms, with physics and chemistry tolerated as providing a useful guide to the background of environmental factors with biological significance. After Mortimer’s early days at Windermere this view became recognizably outdated, the physical and chemical aspects of freshwater sys-tems being increasingly recognized as integrally involved in ‘ecosystem dynamics’ and worthy subjects in their own right. However, the early view is not yet extinct. like Mortimer, few biolo-gists today have advanced (university) exposure to physics; unlike him, still fewer do much to remedy the situation. His influence in the British sphere extended to work on the great lakes of Africa; his advice was used with interpretation of water movements in lakes Nyasa (= Malawi) (Beauchamp 1953), Victoria (fish 1957; talling 1966) and tanganyika (Coulter 1968, 1991).

Analysis of water motion involved him in mathematical physical science, for which he had had no formal education since schooldays. Necessarily, his scope of research within limnology became more concentrated, compared with his exceptionally wide range earlier. Nevertheless, the physics was groundwork with extensive implications for chemical and biological distribu-tions, and his personal range of knowledge within limnology remained immense—and helpful to his colleagues. the breadth and depth of his limnological and oceanographic knowledge often appeared at seminars covering a wide range of topics presented at the Center for Great lakes Studies by scholars from around the world. He would almost always ask the first ques-tion of a speaker, pointing out something he had done or observed decades earlier that was right to the point of the lecture in hand. His 2004 book on lake Michigan (39), although cen-tred on a single lake, also showed remarkably wide interests that included human history.

AWArdS And AppoinTMEnTS

1935 dPhil, University of Berlin1946 dSc, University of Manchester1956 director, Millport Marine laboratory, SMBA1958 fellow of the royal Society1965 Naumann Medal, international Association of limnology1966 distinguished Professor of Zoology and director, Center for Great lakes Studies,

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science1970 President, American Society of limnology and oceanography




1973 President, international Association for Great lakes research1974 fellow, Wisconsin Academy of Science, Arts and letters1981 distinguished Professor emeritus, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee1985 Honorary doctor of Science, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee1987 docteur Honoris Causa, École Polytechnique fédérale de lausanne1995 lifetime Achievement Award, American Society of limnology and oceanography

AcknoWLEdGEMEnTS

We are indebted to Christine Heimann, daughter of Clifford Mortimer, for much information on his home life. Hardy Schwamm of the fBA gave help with several references. Keith Moore at the royal Society located the immensely help-ful assessment of Mortimer’s work by G. W. Platzman. our comments on the scope and development of Mortimer’s work were aided by three unpublished notes left by Mortimer himself: ‘Clifford Mortimer outlines his career in limno-logical research up to 1980, with references (in brackets) to the attached list of publications’ (typescript, 10 pages, 1981), ‘explanatory autobiographical notes to accompany the 1991 list of Collected Papers’ (typescript, 8 pages, 1991), and ‘looking back sixty-four years to my first encounter with waves’ (typescript, 10 pages, 2006; with additional handwrit-ten notes added in 2009). the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has placed additional information about Mortimer on a website: http://www4.uwm.edu/freshwater/news/20100604-clifford-h-mortimer-1911-2010.cfm. other obituary notices used in the preparation of this memoir include those by A. S. Brooks, A. S. Brooks & d. Schwab, A. S. Brooks & J. W. G. lund, J. yauck and K. Hutter.

the frontispiece photograph was taken by f. J. H. Mackereth in the period 1947–50.

rEFErEncES To oThEr AuThorS

Beauchamp, r. S. A. 1953 Hydrological data from lake Nyasa. J. Ecol. 41, 226–239.Bence, S. 2009 A great man of the inland seas. radio interview, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. See http://

www4.uwm.edu/freshwater/news/20100604-clifford-h-mortimer-1911-2010.cfm.Brooks, A. S. & edgington, d. N. 1994 Biogeochemical control of phosphorus cycling and primary production in

lake Michigan. Limnol. Oceanogr. 39, 961–968.Colbourne, J. K. 2011 the ecoresponsive genome of Daphnia pulex. Science 331, 555–561.Coulter, G. W. 1968 Hydrological processes and primary production in lake tanganyika. Proc. 11th Conf. Great

Lakes Res., pp. 609–626. Ann Arbor, Mi: international Association of Great lakes research.Coulter, G. W. (ed.) 1991 Lake Tanganyika and its life. oxford: Natural History Museum Publications, oxford

University Press.fish, G. r. 1957 A seiche movement and its effect on the hydrology of lake Victoria. Fish. Publs Colon. Office,

Lond. 10, 1–68.Golterman, H. l. (ed.) 1984 Sediments, modifying and equilibrating factors on the chemistry of freshwater. Verh. Int.

Verein. Limnol. 22, 23–59.imberger, J. 1994 transport processes in lakes: a review. in Limnology now. A paradigm of planetary problems (ed.

r. Margalef & M. Valls), pp. 99–191. Amsterdam: elsevier.laughton, A. S., Gould, W. J., tucker, M. J. & roe, H. S. J. (eds) 2010 Of seas and ships and scientists. Cambridge:

Shutterworth Press.Mackereth, f. J. H. 1965 Chemical investigations of lake sediments and their interpretation. Proc. R. Soc. Lond.

B 161, 295–309.Mackereth, f. J. H. 1966 Some chemical observations on post-glacial lake sediments. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond.

B 250, 165–213.Pearsall, W. H. 1938a the soil complex in relation to plant communities. ii. Characteristic woodland soils. J. Ecol.

26, 194–209.Pearsall, W. H. 1938b the soil complex in relation to plant communities. iii. Moorlands and bogs. J. Ecol. 26,

298–315.




Platzman, G. W. 1981 Clifford H. Mortimer’s contributions to limnology. invited lecture, plenary session, annual meeting of the American Society of limnology and oceanography, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 15 June 1981. typescript, 43 pages. royal Society Papers.

ramsbottom, A. e. 1976 Depth charts of the Cumbrian lakes (Scientific Publications of the freshwater Biological Association no. 33). Ambleside, UK: freshwater Biological Association. (39 pages.)

talling, J. f. 1966 the annual cycle of stratification and phytoplankton growth in lake Victoria (east Africa). Int. Rev. Ges. Hydrobiol. 51, 545–621.

Utermöhl, H. 1936 Quantitativen Methoden zur Untersuchung des Nannoplanktons. Abderhald. Handb. Biol. ArbMeth. 9, 1879–1937.

Ward, P. r. B. 1979 Seiches, tides and wind set-up on lake Kariba. Limnol. Oceanogr. 24, 151–157.

BiBLioGrAphy

the following publications are those referred to directly in the text. A full bibliography is available as electronic supplementary material at http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbm.2011.0006 or via http://rsbm.royalsocietypublishing.org.

(1) 1936 Experimentelle und cytologische Untersuchungen űber den Generationswechsel der Cladoceren. Zool. Jb. 56, 323–388.

(2) 1938 (With B. M. Jenkin) Sampling lake deposits. Nature 142, 834–835.(3) 1939 Physical and chemical aspects of organic production in lakes. Ann. Appl. Biol. 26, 167–172.(4) the algal cycle and its controlling factors. in 7th Annual Report of the Freshwater Biological

Association, pp. 46–50.(5) 1941 (With B. M. Jenkin & W. Pennington) the study of lake deposits. Nature 147, 496–500.(6) the exchange of dissolved substances between mud and water in lakes. Parts i and ii. J. Ecol. 29,

280–329.(7) 1942 the exchange of dissolved substances between mud and water in lakes. Parts iii and iV. J. Ecol. 30,

147–201.(8) 1951 the use of models in the study of water movement in stratified lakes. Verh. Int. Verein. Limnol. 12,

254–260.(9) 1952 Water movements in stratified lakes during summer stratification: evidence from the distribution of

temperature in Windermere. Phil. Trans R. Soc. Lond. B 236, 355–404.(10) 1953 A review of temperature measurement in limnology. Mitt. Int. Verein. Limnol. no. 1. (25 pages.)(11) the resonant response of stratified lakes to wind. Schweiz. Z. Hydrol. 15, 94–151.(12) 1954 Fertilizers in fish ponds (with additional material and a foreword by C. f. Hickling) (Colonial office,

london, fisheries Publication no. 5). (155 pages.) london: HMSo.(13) 1955 Some effects of the earth’s rotation on water movements in stratified lakes. Verh. Int. Verein. Limnol.

12, 66–77.(14) the dynamics of the autumn overturn in a lake. Un. Geod. Geophys. Rome Assoc. Int. Hydrol. C. R.

Rapp. 3, 15–24.(15) 1956 e. A. Birge, an explorer of lakes. in E. A. Birge, a memoir by G. C. Sellary, pp. 163–211. University

of Wisconsin Press, Madison.(16) 1958 (With f. J. H. Mackereth) Convection and its consequences in ice-covered lakes. Verh. Int. Verein.

Limnol. 13, 923–932.(17) 1959 the physical and chemical work of the freshwater Biological Association. Rep. Br. Assoc. Advmt Sci.

61, 524–530.(18) 1961 Motion in thermoclines. Verh. Int. Verein. Limnol. 14, 79–83.(19) 1963 (With J. W. G. lund & f. J. H. Mackereth) Changes in depth and time of certain chemical and physical

conditions and of the standing crop of Asterionella formosa Hass. in the North Basin of Windermere in 1947. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B 246, 255–290.

(20) frontiers in physical limnology with particular reference to long waves in rotating basins. in Great Lakes Res. Div., Univ. Michigan, Publ. no. 10, pp. 9–42.




(21) 1965 Spectra of long surface waves and tides in lake Michigan and Green Bay, Wisconsin. in Great Lakes Res. Div., Univ. Michigan, Publ. no. 13, pp. 304–325.

(22) 1968 (With d. C. McNaught & K. M. Stewart) Short internal waves near their high-frequency limit in central lake Michigan. in Proc. 11th Conf. Great Lakes Research, pp. 454–469. Ann Arbor, Mi: international Association of Great lakes research.

(23) Internal waves and associated currents observed in Lake Michigan during the summer of 1963 (Center for Great lakes Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Special report no. 1). (24 pages.)

(24) 1969 Physical factors with bearing on eutrophication in lakes in general and large lakes in particular. in Eutrophication: causes, consequences, correctives (ed. G. A. rohlich), pp. 340–368. Washington dC: US National Academy of Sciences.

(25) 1971 Large-scale oscillatory motions and seasonal temperature changes in Lake Michigan and Lake Ontario. Part 1, text. (111 pages.) Part ii, illustrations. (106 pages.) With the collaboration, in Chapter iii on internal wave theory, of M. A. Johnson. (Center for Great lakes Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Special report no. 12.)

(26) Chemical exchanges between sediments and water in the Great lakes—speculations on probable regulatory mechanisms. Limnol. Oceanogr. 2, 387–404.

(27) 1974 lake hydrodynamics. Mitt. Int. Verein. Limnol. 20, 124–197.(28) 1977 Internal waves observed in Lake Ontario during the International Field Year for the Great Lakes

(IFYGL) 1972. I. Descriptive survey and preliminary interpretation of near-inertial oscillations in terms of linear channel-wave models. (Center for Great lakes Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Special report no. 32.) (122 pages.)

(29) 1978 (With C. o. Marmorino) Internal waves observed in Lake Ontario during the International Field Year for the Great Lakes (IFYGL) 1972. II. Spectral analysis and model decomposition. (Center for Great lakes Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Special report no. 33.) (87 pages.)

(30) internal waves and associated currents in lake ontario observed during the ifyGl Program. Verh. Int. Verein. Limnol. 20, 280–287.

(31) 1979 Some central questions in lake dynamics. in isotopes in lake studies, pp. 1–19. Proc. Advis. Group Meeting, Vienna, 1977. Int. Atomic Energy Agency, Panel Proc. Ser. Sti/PUB/511. (290 pages.)

(32) Strategies for coupling data collection and analysis with dynamic modelling of lake motions. in Lake hydrodynamics (Proc. Symp., Lausanne, Switzerland, October 1978) (ed. W. H. Graf & C. H. Mortimer), pp. 183–227. Amsterdam: elsevier.

(33) 1981 The Lake Michigan pollution case: a review and commentary on the limnological and other issues. (Sea Grant institute and Center for Great lake Studies report no. WiS-SG-81-237.) University of Wisconsin. (156 pages.)

(34) 1982 (With N. S. Heaps & e. J. fee) Numerical models and observations of water motion in Green Bay, lake Michigan. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. A 306, 371–398.

(35) 1986 (With U. lemmin) 1986 tests of an extension to internal seiches of defant’s procedure for determina-tion of surface seiche characteristics in real lakes. Limnol. Oceanogr. 31, 1207–1231.

(36) 1987 fifty years of physical investigations and related limnological studies on lake erie, 1928–1977. J. Great Lakes Res. 13, 407–435.

(37) 1988 discoveries and testable hypotheses arising from Coastal Zone Color Scanner images of southern lake Michigan. Limnol. Oceanogr. 33, 203–226.

(38) 1993 Long internal waves in lakes: review of a century of research. (Center for Great lakes Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Special report no. 42.) (117 pages.)

(39) 2004 Lake Michigan in motion: responses of an inland sea to weather, earth-spin, and human activities. University of Wisconsin Press. (310 pages.)

(40) 2005 (With U. lemmin & e. Bauerle) internal seiche dynamics in lake Geneva. Limnol. Oceanogr. 50, 207–216.

(41) 2006 inertial oscillations and related beat pulsations and surges in lakes Michigan and ontario. Limnol. Oceanogr. 51, 1941–1955.



CORRECTIONs

Biogr. Mems Fell. R. Soc. 57, 291–314 (2011; Published online 15 June 2011) (http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbm.2011.0006)

ClIffORd HIlEy MORTIMER27 february 1911 — 11 May 2010

By A. S. BrookS1, J. W. G. Lund2 FrS & J. F. TALLinG3 FrS

1 4791 North Woodburn Street, Whitefish Bay, WI 53211, USA 2 Ellerbeck, Ellerigg Road, Ambleside, Cumbria LA22 9EU, UK

3 Hawthorn View, The Pines, Bongate, Appleby, Cumbria CA16 6HR, UK

We regret the following errors in the memoir:Mortimer’s unpublished notes (2006), cited on page 298, correctly state that the proper title

for ‘Admiralty Mine department’ was ‘Admiralty Mine design department’, or Mdd.Of the scientists named in the top paragraph of page 299, only deacon, longuet-Higgins

and Mortimer were in fact members of ‘Group W’ of the Admiralty Research laboratory at Teddington; Crick and Penman remained for a time in the Mdd at Havant, and laughton joined the National Institute of Oceanography much later, in 1955.

The last three words of the laughton et al. (2010) reference on page 312 should be ‘Cambridge: lutterworth Press’.

(http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbm.2012.0035)

Biogr. Mems Fell. R. Soc. 58, 347 (2012)

http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1098/rsbm.2012.0035&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2012-08-08

clifford hiley mortimer. 27 february 1911 −− 11 may...

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