The tides of the waters of New England and New York [book]

Alfred C. Redfield
1980 unpublished
Fifteen years ago Alfred Redfield's friends, associates and students prepared a volume of scientifc papers in his honor on his 75th birthday. It is characteristic of the man that today, as he approaches his 90th birthday, this volume on The Tides of the Waters of New England and New York flows from his own pen. His interest in natural phenomena and his curiosity about them have been undiminished by passing years -indeed these years have given him the wisdom and insight to understand and to
more » ... in complex problems. Alfred Redfield's interests have always been very broad, and he has made significant scientifc contributions to many fields of knowledge. After earning a worldwide reputation in physiology, parti\ularly with regard to muscle physiology, the effects of ionizing radiation on organisms and the gas exchanges of the blood, especially hemocyanin, he devoted more and more time to one of his first loves -life in the sea. He received one of the first appointments, as Senior Biologist, to the scientific staf of the fledgling Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Alfred Redfield has a holistic approach to the biology of the sea, with the organisms drawing their sustenance from the nutrients dissolved in the water and returning these by excretion, death and decay in the endless cycle of life in the sea. One of his earliest marine publications, in 1934, was "On the proportions of organic derivatives in sea water and their relation to the composition of the plankton"" Redfield brought order out of chaos by reorganizing the consistency of the ratios of essential nutrient elements as they are assimilated by the phytoplankton and later returned to the water by regeneration. This consistency, not previously recognized, forms the cornerstone of modern studies of the dynamics of phytoplankton populations. Alfred Redfield's interest in the tides dates, no doubt, to his boyhood when he dug for clams on the flats of Barnstable Harbor and sailed his boats beset by the tidal currents common in Cape Cod waters. In 1950, he published his first definitive paper on "The analysis of tidal phenomena in narrow embayments",b an analysis which he further develops and expands a.
doi:10.1575/1912/1136 fatcat:dgcdidftbjap7jz6nikerovqci