Bjørn Helland-Hansen: The Oceanographer Who Mapped the Engine of the Ocean Currents

On October sixteenth, eighteen seventy-seven, Bjørn Helland-Hansen was born in Christiania, now Oslo, Norway. He was an oceanographer and physiologist, and his academic field was physical oceanography and marine physics, with a particular focus on ocean currents and their role in climate.

Helland-Hansen was a pioneer of modern oceanography and a key figure in the establishment of the Geophysical Institute at the University of Bergen. Together with the Swedish scientist Johan Sandström, he laid the theoretical foundation for the understanding of ocean currents through his work on thermohaline circulation – the global ocean conveyor belt driven by differences in water temperature and salinity. He was an early proponent of using physical principles and mathematical models to understand the dynamics of the ocean, rather than just describing it. Through his research on the Norwegian Sea and the Gulf Stream, he demonstrated how ocean currents act as a heat pump for the climate of Northern Europe. His precise measurements and theoretical work established a solid scientific basis for how the atmosphere and the oceans interact to shape our weather and climate.