Gilbert Walker

Who was Gilbert Walker?

Sir Gilbert Thomas Walker, CSI, FRS, was a British physicist and statistician of the 20th century. He is best known for his groundbreaking description of the Southern Oscillation, a major phenomenon of global climate, and for greatly advancing the study of climate in general.

He was born in Rochdale, Lancashire on 14 June 1868, the fourth of seven children of Thomas Walker and Charlotte Haslehurst. He attended Whitgift School and St Paul's School, gained a degree in Metallurgy from Imperial College London and attended Trinity College, Cambridge where he was Senior Wrangler in 1889.

Walker was an established applied mathematician at Cambridge University when he become director-general of observatories in India in 1904. While there, he studied the characteristics of the Indian Ocean monsoon, the failure of whose rains had brought severe famine to the country in 1899. Analyzing vast amounts of weather data from India and lands beyond, over the next fifteen years he published the first descriptions of the great seesaw oscillation of atmospheric pressure between the Indian and Pacific Ocean, and its correlation to temperature and rainfall patterns across much of the Earth's tropical regions, including India. He is also worked with the Indian Meteorological Department especially in linking the moonsoon with Southern Oscillation phenomenon. He was made a Companion of the Order of the Star of India in 1911.