Scientists
Edward Norton Lorenz
Citation Formats
General Reference
APA Style
BibTeX
Lorenz was an American mathematician and meteorologist at MIT who, while rerunning a simplified numerical weather model in 1961, discovered that rounding a starting value from six decimal places to three produced a completely different forecast within a couple of simulated months. He published the result in 1963 as Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow, showing that even a fully deterministic system could be practically unpredictable over time, an idea he later popularized as the butterfly effect. The finding set a hard limit on how far ahead numerical weather prediction could ever reach, no matter how good the models became.
Facts
Birth YearSourced to the subject's own account Death DateSourced to the subject's own account Death YearSourced to the subject's own account FieldSourced to the subject's own account Cross-Tradition Connections
Conducted
Member Of
Proposed
Works In
Sources
1. Edward Norton Lorenz (Wikipedia)
WikipediaLead sectionQuote, Lead section
Edward Norton Lorenz (May 23, 1917 – April 16, 2008) was an American mathematician and meteorologist who established the theoretical basis of weather and climate predictability, as well as the basis for computer-aided atmospheric physics and meteorology.
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.