GEORGE VERONIS

VERONIS--George, of New Haven, born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on June 3, 1926, passed away of natural causes on Sunday, June 30, 2019. Neither his family background nor the interruption of his education by the service in the US Navy, where he worked aboard submarines in the Pacific Ocean during World War II, were ideal preparations for the academic career that he chose. With the end of the global conflict, George entered college on the G.I. Bill and graduated with a B.S. in Mathematics from Lafayette College in 1950. His enthusiasm for mathematics led him to Brown University where he received a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics in 1954. Even as he was finishing his PhD, he held a research position at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (1953-1956), then the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (1956-64), MIT (1961-1966), and Yale since 1966, where he was a Professor of Geology and Geophysics, Department Chair from 1976-1979, the director of the Applied Mathematics Program from 1979-1993, and since 1985 the Henry Barnard Davis Professor of Geophysics and Applied Science. George was at the center of the development of quantitative science of the flow in the atmosphere and oceans. He was the editor of the Journal of Marine Research for 37 years, and a co-founder (in 1959) and director of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Summer Program at the Wood Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, for which he shared the American Geophysical Union Award for excellence in Geophysical Education in 2008. Some of George's other honors include his election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1963, Guggenheim Fellowship (twice), Fellowship of the American Geophysical Union in 1975, membership of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in 1981, and membership of the US National Academy of Sciences in 1994. He was a runner for many years and a long walker in later years. He loved bird watching and enjoyed spending sabbatical winters in Australia. He had a gift for languages and spoke fluent Greek and Swedish. George contributed One Million dollars last year to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. Those who knew George more through his stellar academic work also knew the seriousness with which he took his other responsibilities. He was an excellent classroom teacher: clear, interesting and well organized, and was known to lecture formally in front of a blackboard during the allotted classroom hours even if there was only one student in the class. He had an uncanny talent to visualize flow structures in three dimensions and an immense ability to concentrate for long periods of time on complex calculations. He cared deeply for academic excellence, had no patience for administrators who didn't understand the real meaning of this phrase, and felt free to brandish his opinions around. He was generous with his time and prudent with his advice. George could be a relentless advocate of a colleague or friend if he perceived that injustice was dealt to him or her. Along with his wife, Kim, who was of central importance in his life since their marriage in 1963, George leaves his daughter, Melissa Odell and her husband, Vinnie of Maryland, his son, Benjamin Veronis and partner, Christopher Gilbert of California, and his grandchildren, Jocelyn Laracuente and her husband, Nelson, and Wesley Odell. He also leaves his sister, Mary Thompson of New Jersey, and brothers, John (Lauren) Veronis of New York and Alexander (Pearl) Veronis of Pennsylvania. He was predeceased by his brother, Peter (Babs) Veronis, and sister, Elinor Veronis. His family was a theme that was no less important to him in his life than his many intellectual achievements. The Veronis Family