Walter Heinrich Munk is an American physical oceanographer. He is professor of geophysics emeritus and holds the Secretary of the Navy/Chief of Naval Operations Oceanography Chair at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. Walter Heinrich Munk was born in Vienna on 19 October 1917. After earning a bachelor’s degree (1939) in physics from the California Institute of Technology, Munk convinced Harald Sverdrup, director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, Los Angeles, to give him a summer job. By 1940 he had earned a master’s degree in geophysics from the California Institute of Technology and by 1947 had completed a doctorate in oceanography at Scripps. After graduation Scripps hired him as an assistant professor of geophysics. He became a full professor there in 1954 and was made a member of the University of California’s Institute of Geophysics. Walter Munk has been elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences in the United States, the Royal Society and the Russian Academy of Sciences. Munk has received many national and international honors including the Vetlesen Prize, Gold Medal, Royal Astronomical Society, Bakerian Lecturer of the Royal Society, Agassiz Medal of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Medal of Science and the Kyoto Prize.