The scientific and personal imprint of Jordi Font, a serene oceanographer

Abstract

BiographyPhysical oceanographers have been principal actors in Scandinavian research centres since the end of the 19th century, and in other northern European countries and the United States since the 1920s. The study of the physical marine environment developed even further in these countries during the 1960s and 1970s with the advent of continuous recording instruments, the start of numerical models and the appearance of satellite remote sensing. During these years, however, physical oceanography remained largely neglected in Spain, as research on marine sciences was dominated by a long-standing tradition in biological and chemical sciences, consolidated thanks to the importance of fisheries (particularly off NW Africa) and the clear influence of the ecologist Ramon Margalef and the chemists Fernando Fraga and Antoni Ballester. In the early 1970s, Spain had no more than a handful of oceanographers studying the physical environment of the ocean (Pelegrí et al. 2012).