The way long in 90 years. to the 90th anniversary of professor m.n. koshlyakov, the participant of the polygon–70 experiment

The article commemorates the 90th anniversary of Prof. M.N. Koshlyakov – prominent scientific figure of the Russian Federation, physical oceanographer, recipient of the Makarov’s Prize, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Honored Professor of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. He is Chief Scientist, the founder and the first Head of the Laboratory of Marine Currents at the P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Prof. Koshlyakov made major contributions to studies of temporal and spatial variability of oceanographic variables over a broad range of scales. Over his career, he participated and led over two dozen scientific expeditions, including such large ocean projects as Polygon–67, Polygon–70, POLYMODE, MEGAPOLYGON, ATLANTEX–90. His expeditions extended to regions of the western boundary currents of the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans, to observe new, previously unknown components of the circulation of the World Ocean waters. Prof. Koshlyakov is the lead author of the discovery of open ocean mesoscale eddies made by a team of oceanographers at the Institute of Oceanology at the turn of the 1960–1970s. This discovery became a milestone in oceanography of the 20th century that dramatically changed our understanding of the processes governing the Ocean and their influence on the Earth’s climate. From mid-1960s to early 1990s, Prof. Koshlyakov was a direct participant and subsequently the leader of the main domestic and international experiments on the study of ocean eddies.