Edward Norton Lorenz

Edward Norton Lorenz

Corina Ganje

Meteorology

Dave Anderson

December 7, 2012

On May 23, 1917, the man who coined the term “butterfly effect” was born in West Hartford, Connecticut. Edward Norton Lorenz led a happy childhood, excelling at chess at an early age. He had learned from his mother, who had actually once beaten the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)’s chess champion. It didn’t take long for Ed to beat his mother and father, and he eventually became the captain of his chess team in high school. Aside from chess, Ed was also interested in astronomy. He had experienced a total solar eclipse from his home when he was eight, leading to a lifelong interest in astronomy; he also had the chance one summer to spend time at the Lowell Observatory, taking pictures of Jupiter. He also had an interest in weather, and enjoyed spending time reviewing weather records. At that time, he never read any books covering this field, and his interest remained primarily in mathematics and astronomy.

Ed later became enthusiastic about hiking and skiing, leading to his enrollment at Dartmouth College to study math after graduating high school. Upon obtaining his degree there in 1938, he began the mathematics graduate program at Harvard. In preparation for his doctorate, he took a very wide variety of classes. His advisor at this time was Professor George Birkhoff. Many wonder his work rubbed off on Ed, although he implies that he had not been aware of Poincare’s work upon starting his own research. Because Ed’s approach to chaos theory was different than others before him, his work led to the fractal geometry of the strange attractor.

During his studies, World War II broke out, and Ed needed to decide how to utilize his talents best during these years. He signed up for a course offered at MIT to train weather forecasters for the Army, and ended up being one of five to stay on as teachers for the next course. In this period he received his master’s...