Scope and Content Note
The papers of Edward Norton Lorenz (1917-2008) span 1895-2009 with the bulk of the collection dating from 1942 to 2000. Lorenz's early academic background was in mathematics, but during World War II he trained as a meteorologist with the United States Army Air Forces and continued in that profession through a long career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he eventually rose to head the Department of Meteorology and Physical Oceanography. Late in 1961, while working with computer models of weather systems, he had the insight that led to his promulgation of the deterministic chaos theory that had a profound effect on the physical sciences and other fields such as economics. The papers are arranged in nine series: Correspondence, Science File, Organizations, Speeches and Writings, Digital Files, Miscellany, Addition, Oversize, and Artifact.
Much of the Correspondence series is the product of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology meteorology department or of projects Lorenz managed under the aegis of the department, so correspondence, especially in the earlier years, is sometimes between parties other than Lorenz. Much of the Correspondence relates to professional tasks such as organizing conferences, job recommendations for students and colleagues, speaking engagements and professional travel, requests for reprints of papers, and personnel matters. Topics covered in the correspondence include chaos theory, computer programming for weather and climate modeling, long-range weather prediction, and numerically based weather forecasting. Correspondents include Hidetoshi Arakawa, Maurice L. Blackmon, William Blumen, Glenn W. Brier, E. V. Chelam, Richard A. Craig, D. A. Davies, Thomas Vivian Davies, John A. Dutton, Isadore Enger, John Firor, W. Lawrence Gates, Michael Ghil, James Gleick, F. Kenneth Hare, Isaac M. Held, Henry G. Houghton, Charles L. Jordan, Elizabeth A. Kelley, William H. Klein, E. B. Kraus, Cecil E. Leith, Gordon J. MacDonald, Thomas F. Malone, Yale Mintz, H. Stuart Muench, Jack Nordø, José Pinto Peixoto, S. I. Rasool, Walter Orr Roberts, P. L. Schereschewsy, William D. Sellers, Bernard Shorr, J. Smagorinsky, Kenneth C. Spengler, Philip Duncan Thompson, Kevin E. Trenberth, and James A. Yorke.
The Correspondence series also includes files copied from storage media found within the general correspondence during the course of processing. The contents include chaos theory data visualization software from James A. Yorke and a web page and powerpoint presentation from John A. Dutton.
The Science File includes chart records and computer readouts documenting Lorenz's discovery of the chaos phenomenon in which infinitesimal differences in data inputs yield wildly divergent results in the predictions of the behavior of chaotic systems such as the weather. He proved that accurate weather forecasting outside of a small time increment, perhaps as narrow as one week, was impossible even with constantly improving measuring and computer technology.
The Organizations series documents Lorenz's early experiences as a weather forecaster in the Army Air Forces and his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The Speeches and Writings series primarily contains scientific papers and both overhead and slide presentations. The series also includes bibliographies, reviews, and materials relating to Lorenz's books The Essence of Chaos, A Method of Applying the Hydrodynamic and Thermodynamic Equations to Atmospheric Models, and The Nature and Theory of the General Circulation of the Atmosphere.
The Speeches and Writings series also includes digital files copied from storage media found within the paper files during the course of processing. The series also includes scans of Lorenz's published papers, chaos theory data visualization software from James A. Yorke and a paper entitled, "A Review and Demonstration of The Essence of Chaos by Edward N. Lorenz" by Robert M. Lurie. This paper contains embedded graphs created with a Mathematica program.
The Digital Files series contains chaos theory and strange attractor data visualization software, computational software and accompanying data files, presentations, text files, audio files, games, and email. The digital files were copied from storage media found independent of the paper files. In instances where digital materials were found with the collection's paper content, the digital materials are listed and described alongside the paper.
The Miscellany includes biographical material and files relating to his awards including the Crafoord and Kyoto prizes.
The Addition contains correspondence primarily between Robert C. Hilborn and Edward N. Lorenz concerning Hilborn's efforts to ascertain the origin of the term "butterfly effect." Other correspondents include P.G. Drazin, Philip Merilees, and Heinz Georg Schuster. The series also contains a 1972 speech given by Lorenz wherein he first uses the term "butterfly effect" and Hilborn's paper, "Sea gulls, butterflies, and grasshoppers: A brief history of the butterfly effect in nonlinear dynamics," published in 2004.
The remaining series includes Oversize and Artifact material.