Knowledge Book.

Arvid Hallén

Arvid Hallén (born 3 July 1950) is a Norwegian sociologist and the Director-General of the Research Council of Norway (since 2004).

He holds a mag.art. (PhD) degree in sociology from the University of Oslo. He served as Director of the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research from 1986 to 1995, and was employed at the institute as a researcher since 1978. He became Director for Humanities and Social Sciences in the Research Council of Norway in 1995, and Director-General in 2004.

He is a member the Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences.

Sir Gilbert Walker

Sir Gilbert Thomas Walker, CSI, FRS (14 June 1868 – 4 November 1958) 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.

Walker was an established applied mathematician at the University of Cambridge 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.

Walker continued his studies of yearly weather and climate change after his retirement from India (in 1924) and acceptance of a professorship in meteorology at Imperial College London. He had only mixed success in his original goal, the prediction of monsoonal failures; however, his theories and broad body of supporting research represented an invaluable step forward, allowing his successors in climate study to move beyond local observation and forecasting toward comprehensive models of climate worldwide. He served as president of the Royal Meteorological Society from 1926 to 1927.

He died at Coulsdon, Surrey on 4 November 1958. He was 90 years old.

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