Harry Bryden

Who is Harry Bryden?

Harry Leonard Bryden, FRS is an American physical oceanographer, professor at University of Southampton, and staff at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton. He is best known for his pioneering work in ocean circulation and in the role of the ocean in the Earth's climate.

Born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1946, Bryden received his A.B. degree in mathematics from Dartmouth College. For a short period after graduation, he worked as a mathematician on oceanographic topics for offices of the United States Navy in Maryland and Connecticut. Bryden's doctoral training in oceanography was undertaken at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution through the long-standing joint program for students that operates between these institutes. During his time at MIT-WHOI, Bryden completed and published work on a number of topics including water mass properties, Mediterranean outflow and geostrophy. He was supervised initially by Henry Stommel and then principally by Nick Fofonoff, and his thesis title was "Momentum, Mass, Heat, and Vorticity Balances from Oceanic Measurements of Current and Temperature".