Henry Stommel  was a major contributor to the field of physical oceanography. He was born on September 27, 1920 in Wilmington, Delaware, United States. An anomaly among modern scientists, Stommel became a full professor without an earned doctorate. He received his B.S. from Yale University (1942) and served there as instructor in mathematics and astronomy (1942–44). A research associate at the Woods Hole (Mass.) Oceanographic Institution from 1944 to 1959, he became professor of oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1959 and remained there except for the years 1960–63, when he taught at Harvard. Stommel established several stations to study ocean currents, including the PANULIRUS station (begun in 1954) in Bermuda. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1962 and received the National Medal of Science in 1989. He died on January 17, 1992 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States.