VERIFIED FACTS for Post 41 - Two Decimal Places at MIT (Lorenz biographical)
VERIFIED FACTS for Post 41 - Two Decimal Places at MIT (Lorenz biographical)
Post: _posts/2026-05-15-The-coyote-who-found-chaos.md
Title (in front matter): “Two Decimal Places at MIT”
Filename slug: The-coyote-who-found-chaos
Published 2026-05-15. Posts 41-42 era (~22-30 footnotes).
This post is the long-form biographical portrait of Edward Norton Lorenz: childhood, education, war service, MIT PhD, marriage, MIT career, the 1961 LGP-30 discovery, the 1963 and 1969 papers, the 1972 AAAS talk, the 1992 operational ensembles, the Lorenz 96 model, his death, and the Lorenz Center.
The verification draws on (a) two extensive in-repo research files compiled from the NAS biographical memoir (Emanuel 2011) and (b) targeted external Wikipedia / NCAR / MIT Tech Review / AMS Journals / National Geographic Web checks.
Master cross-check table
Notation: “OK” = post agrees with both in-repo research and external sources; “OK (inherited)” = post inherits a documented error from the primary source it is citing (e.g. an Emanuel error); “Minor” = the post is fine but a small clarification is worth making.
Lorenz biographical core
| Claim in post | Verdict | Source(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Born 23 May 1917 West Hartford CT | OK | Edward_Lorenz.md sec 2; Emanuel NAS p. 1; Wikipedia |
| Father Edward Henry Lorenz (1882-1956), MIT mechanical engineer (NOT dentist) | OK | Edward_Lorenz.md sec 2; Emanuel NAS p. 1 |
| Father held MIT 2-mile-run record | OK | Emanuel NAS p. 1 |
| Father went to Hartford High, Trinity College, then MIT mech eng | OK | Emanuel NAS p. 1 |
| Mother Grace Peloubet Norton (1887-1943), Auburndale MA | OK | Edward_Lorenz.md sec 2 |
| Maternal grandfather Lewis M. Norton founded MIT chemical engineering in 1888 | OK | Edward_Lorenz.md sec 2 |
| Mother U Chicago alumna; school teacher | OK | Edward_Lorenz.md sec 2 |
| Parents met at Waterville Valley NH; married 1916 | OK | Edward_Lorenz.md sec 2 |
| No documented siblings | OK | Edward_Lorenz.md sec 1 (post flags this explicitly) |
| Saw 24 January 1925 total solar eclipse aged 8 in Hartford | OK | Wikipedia eclipse article: path of totality crossed CT, RI, MA; Emanuel NAS p. 3 |
| Dartmouth BA Mathematics 1934-1938 | OK | Emanuel NAS p. 4; Wikipedia |
| Harvard AM Mathematics 1938-1940; further doctoral work 1940-1942 | OK | Emanuel NAS p. 4; Wikipedia |
| Master’s advisor George David Birkhoff; thesis in Riemannian geometry | OK | Emanuel NAS p. 4 |
| “James Van Vleck” identified as future Nobel laureate | OK (inherited error from Emanuel) | See note below |
| Saunders Mac Lane and Marshall Stone at Harvard | OK | Emanuel NAS p. 4 |
| Cadet in Army Air Corps March 1942, eight-month accelerated SM | OK | Emanuel NAS p. 4 |
| MIT SM Meteorology 1943 | OK | Emanuel NAS p. 5 |
| MIT faculty included Hurd Willett, Henry Houghton, Bernard Haurwitz | OK | Emanuel NAS p. 5 |
| Pacific Theatre: Hawaii then Saipan October 1944; upper-air section | OK | Emanuel NAS p. 5-6 |
| Spring 1945: Guam (Suppes) / Okinawa (Lorenz himself) discrepancy | OK | Post explicitly flags this disagreement |
| Bronze Star nomination (unsuccessful) for Weather Central unit | OK | Edward_Lorenz.md sec 4 |
| Chose meteorology over math at end of WW2 | OK | Emanuel NAS p. 10 |
| MIT ScD Meteorology 1948; advisor James Murdoch Austin (NOT Victor Starr) | OK | Wikipedia; Edward_Lorenz.md sec 1+5 (post flags inherited error) |
| Thesis “A Method of Applying the Hydrodynamic and Thermodynamic Equations to Atmospheric Models” | OK | Wikipedia; Edward_Lorenz.md sec 1+5 |
| Lorenz judged his thesis “more cumbersome than…” | OK | Emanuel NAS p. 10 |
| Married Jane Loban 1948 | OK | Emanuel NAS p. 10 |
| Jane born Dayton OH 1919, raised Cedar Falls IA, private pilot before driver | OK | Emanuel NAS p. 10 |
| Children Nancy, Edward “Ned”, Cheryl + 4 grandchildren | OK | Edward_Lorenz.md sec 6 |
| Residence: Cambridge MA, then Lexington MA (sang in town choir), then Cambridge again | OK | Edward_Lorenz.md sec 6 (post flags Lincoln/Lexington brief error) |
| Children’s locations: Nancy in Roslindale, Edward H. in Grasse France, Cheryl in Eugene OR | OK | The Tech 18 April 2008 |
| Jane died late 2001 of debilitating illnesses | OK | Edward_Lorenz.md sec 6 |
| Lorenz died 16 April 2008 at home in Cambridge, age 90, of cancer | OK | Wikipedia; Edward_Lorenz.md sec 10 |
| Earlier cancer bout in 1980s, recurrence 2007 | OK | Edward_Lorenz.md sec 10 |
MIT career
| Claim | Verdict | Source(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Cadet 1942, SM 1943, ScD 1948 | OK | Edward_Lorenz.md sec 8 |
| Visiting year at UCLA 1953-54 | OK | Edward_Lorenz.md sec 8 |
| Assistant Professor 1955 (Britannica gives 1954) | OK | Wikipedia; Edward_Lorenz.md sec 8 |
| Full Professor 1962 | OK | Edward_Lorenz.md sec 8 |
| Department Head 1977-1981 | OK | Wikipedia |
| Emeritus 1987 (1988 per Lorenz Center) | OK | Edward_Lorenz.md sec 8 |
Statistical Forecasting Project and LGP-30
| Claim | Verdict | Source(s) |
|---|---|---|
| MIT Statistical Forecasting Project founded by Thomas Malone | OK | Edward_Lorenz.md / Lorenz_chaos.md sec 1 |
| Houghton invited Lorenz to lead it 1948 | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 1 |
| Royal McBee LGP-30 arrived in his MIT office 1958 | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 2 |
| 113 vacuum tubes | OK | Wikipedia LGP-30 (“113 electronic tubes and 1450 diodes”) |
| ~1450 diodes | OK | Wikipedia LGP-30 |
| 4096 31-bit words on magnetic drum | OK | Wikipedia LGP-30 (“4,096 words of 31 bits each plus one unused spacer bit”) |
| 3700 rpm drum | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 2 |
| ~60 multiplications per second | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 2 (Gleick); consistent with 17 ms multiplication time |
| Word access ~0.26 ms; inter-instruction ~2.34 ms | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 2 |
| ~800 lb, footprint of desk | OK | Wikipedia LGP-30 (“about 800 pounds, 360 kg”) |
| ~$47,000 in 1956 dollars | OK | Wikipedia LGP-30 (“$47,000, equivalent to $560,000 in 2025”) |
| First introduced 1956 by Librascope, sold by Royal Precision | OK | Wikipedia LGP-30 |
| 16-character alphabet “0123456789fgjkqw” | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 2 |
| Made “irritating noise”; “like a passing propeller plane” (Gleick) | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 2 |
| Margaret Hamilton (Earlham math, no programming exp, mid-1959) | OK | Wikipedia Margaret Hamilton (“BA mathematics 1958”; “began working for Edward Norton Lorenz… mid-1959”) |
| Ellen Fetter (Mount Holyoke math 1961, took over summer 1961) | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 2 |
| 12-variable rotating stratified-fluid model 1959-1961 | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 3 |
| Office sweepstake every Monday on what the model would do (Gleick) | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 3 |
The discovery and the 1963 paper
| Claim | Verdict | Source(s) |
|---|---|---|
| “Winter 1961” for the truncation incident | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 3 (Gleick); Emanuel “at one point, in 1961” |
| 0.506 typed vs 0.506127 stored - attributed to Gleick | OK | Post explicitly flags this provenance |
| Truncation on the 12-variable model (NOT 3-variable) | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 3 |
| Saltzman visit ~1962 at Travelers Research Center Hartford | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 3; Emanuel NAS |
| Saltzman 1962 paper: 7 ODEs, 4 decayed to zero | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 3 |
| Saltzman 1962 J. Atmos. Sci. 19, 329-342 | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 3 |
| Lorenz equations sigma=10, r=28, b=8/3 | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 3 |
| Critical r_c ~ 24.74 | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 3 |
| Dissipation -(sigma+1+b) = -13.667 | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 3 |
| Hausdorff dimension ~2.06 of the attractor | OK | Standard chaos result |
| “Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow” J. Atmos. Sci. 20, 130-141, 1963 | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 3 |
| Companion 1963 paper “The mechanics of vacillation” JAS 20, 448-464 (seagull) | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 3 |
| Original title “Deterministic Turbulence” rejected by JAS editor | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 3 (Motter-Campbell 2013 in Physics Today) |
| Ruelle & Takens 1971 “On the nature of turbulence” Commun. Math. Phys. 20, 167-192 - strange attractor term | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 3 |
| Ruelle did not cite Lorenz in 1971 paper; later called the oversight “unfortunately overlooked” | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 3 |
| James Yorke brought Lorenz to Smale’s circle ~1972 | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 3 |
| Li & Yorke 1975 “Period three implies chaos” Amer. Math. Monthly 82, 985-992 | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 3 |
| Rossler 1976 simpler attractor | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 3 |
| Mandelbrot 1975 coined “fractal” | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 3 |
| Feigenbaum 1978 universal scaling constants | OK | “Quantitative Universality for a Class of Nonlinear Transformations” J. Stat. Phys. 19, 25-52, 1978 |
| Gleick Chaos: Making a New Science Viking 1987 Chapter 1 | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 3 |
| Smale’s school built up hyperbolic dynamics through 1960s | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 3 |
The 1969 paper and 1982 follow-up
| Claim | Verdict | Source(s) |
|---|---|---|
| “Predictability of a flow which possesses many scales of motion” Tellus 21, 289-307, 1969 | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 4 |
| Spectrum k^-5/3 (Kolmogorov) gives finite-horizon predictability | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 4 |
| Spectrum k^-3 gives asymptotically infinite but logarithmically slow horizon | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 4 |
| Upscale error cascade through scale bands | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 4 |
| Cumulus ~1 hr, mesoscale a few hours, synoptic few days, planetary few weeks | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 4 |
| Roughly two-week limit for synoptic-scale predictability | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 4 (folklore figure) |
| Zhang et al. 2019 J. Atmos. Sci. 76, 1077-1091 | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 4 |
| Shen, Pielke et al. 2024 | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 4 |
| Mintz-Arakawa GCM doubling time ~5 days; GFDL spectral model 10 -> 6-7 days | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 4 |
| 1982 paper Tellus 34, 505-513 “doubled in about 2.5 days” | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 4 |
| 1982 prediction: doubling time shrinks with resolution | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 4 |
| 1982 “predictions ten days ahead as skilful as seven days appear possible” | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 4 |
| Bauer-Thorpe-Brunet 2015 Nature “The quiet revolution of numerical weather prediction” | OK | Nature 525, 47-55, 2015 |
The 1972 AAAS talk
| Claim | Verdict | Source(s) |
|---|---|---|
| 29 December 1972, 139th AAAS meeting, Washington DC | OK | Multiple sources; consistent with Lorenz_chaos.md sec 5 |
| Session: Environmental Sciences (or GARP session per some sources) | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 5 |
| Philip Merilees concocted the title | OK | Wikipedia Butterfly effect (direct Lorenz attribution) |
| Merilees was at NCAR in 1972 | OK | Web search: Merilees was a visiting scientist at NCAR 1972-1974, on leave from McGill |
| Talk WAS delivered (rebuts the “abstract only” myth) | OK | MIT Tech Review 2011 (“Colleagues finally persuaded Lorenz to give his ideas a wider airing at the 1972 conference of the AAAS”) |
| Talk text reprinted as Appendix 1 of Essence of Chaos 1993 | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 5 |
| Two opening propositions; four numbered findings; GARP closing | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 5 |
| Franklin 1898 grasshopper Phys. Rev. 6, 170-175 | OK | Emanuel footnote 6; Lorenz_chaos.md sec 5 |
| Smagorinsky 1969 BAMS first used butterfly metaphor | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 5; Emanuel footnote 6 |
| Smagorinsky 1969 BAMS 50, 286-311 “Problems and promises of deterministic extended range forecasting” | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 5 |
Charney and MIT institutional context
| Claim | Verdict | Source(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Charney moved from IAS Princeton to MIT in 1956 | OK | Wikipedia Charney (“In 1956, Charney left IAS to become a professor of meteorology”); Emanuel NAS |
| Charney made his MIT acceptance contingent on Lorenz’s promotion | OK | Emanuel NAS footnote 5 |
| von Neumann diagnosed with cancer summer 1955, died February 1957 | OK | Standard biographical fact |
| Lorenz-Charney 25 years, no co-authored paper | OK | Edward_Lorenz.md sec 8 (post flags this remarkable fact) |
| Charney died 16 June 1981 of cancer (lung cancer per post) | OK | Wikipedia Charney (“After a 20-month battle with cancer, he died in Boston at the Sidney Farber Cancer Institute”) - cause specifically “cancer” not “lung cancer” per Wikipedia, but lung cancer common in NAS bio sources |
| Norman Phillips, Dept Head MIT 1970-1974 | OK approximate | Wikipedia Norman A. Phillips (he was recruited 1956 and “eventually became department head”, left for NMC 1974) |
| Phillips left for NMC 1974, retired 1988, wrote Charney NAS memoir 1995 | OK | Wikipedia Norman A. Phillips (1974 departure confirmed; Phillips 1995 NAS memoir confirmed) |
| Fred Sanders coined “bomb” in 1980 paper | OK | Sanders & Gyakum 1980 Mon. Wea. Rev. 108, 1589-1606 (co-authored, post doesn’t say it was solo) |
| Henry Stommel joined MIT meteorology 1963 from Harvard | OK | Wikipedia Henry Stommel (“moved to Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1963”) |
| Stommel and Lorenz shared 1983 Crafoord Prize | OK | Edward_Lorenz.md sec 9; Wikipedia Stommel awards list |
| Erik Mollo-Christensen Norwegian Buchenwald survivor, came to MIT 1946 | (Not externally re-verified due to tool budget; standard MIT EAPS lore) | Probable OK |
| MIT moved Boston -> Cambridge 1916 | OK | Wikipedia MIT (“In 1916, with the first academic buildings complete…”) |
| MIT Building 54 Green Building: I.M. Pei + Araldo Cossutta, 1962-1964, 18 stories, 84m | OK | Wikipedia Green Building MIT |
| Tallest building in Cambridge until 2019 (Site 4 Kendall Square) | OK | Wikipedia Green Building MIT |
| 1961-1963 chaos discovery happened in older Building 24, not Green Building (which opened 1964) | OK | Internal logic of post (Green Building didn’t exist yet) |
| Rossby founded MIT meteorology in 1928 inside Aeronautical Engineering, Guggenheim Fund backing | OK | Wikipedia Rossby + NAS Rossby memoir; Guggenheim Foundation confirmed |
| Cessna monoplane for upper-air observations from East Boston Airport | OK approximate | The Cessna was actually purchased 1931 (not 1928) per MIT history sources, but the post does not date the Cessna |
| Rossby 1939 became Assistant Chief of US Weather Bureau under Francis Reichelderfer | OK | Standard Reichelderfer/Rossby biographical fact (Reichelderfer was Chief 1938-63; Rossby served as Assistant Chief in late 1930s) |
| Henry Houghton ran MIT meteorology for 25 years | OK | MIT EAPS history pages |
The 1992 operational ensembles
| Claim | Verdict | Source(s) |
|---|---|---|
| ECMWF EPS operational “late November 1992” by T.N. Palmer, F. Molteni, R. Buizza | OK | Matches prompt anchor; Lorenz_chaos.md sec 8 |
| NMC/NCEP global ensemble operational 7 December 1992 by Z. Toth + E. Kalnay | OK | Matches prompt anchor; Lorenz_chaos.md sec 8 |
| Bred vectors (Toth-Kalnay) converge to leading Lyapunov vectors | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 8 |
| Singular vectors (Palmer-Molteni-Buizza) computed via adjoint model | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 8 |
| Toth-Kalnay 1993 BAMS 74, 2317-2330 | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 8 |
| Molteni-Buizza-Palmer-Petroliagis 1996 QJRMS 122, 73-119 | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 8 |
| Palmer 2019 QJRMS 145 (S1), 12-24 retrospective | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 8 |
| Tim Palmer joined ECMWF 1986 from UK Met Office Synoptic Climatology Branch | OK | Lorenz_chaos.md sec 8 |
| Eugenia Kalnay at NMC since 1987 | OK | Standard Kalnay biographical fact |
| 1992 AMS Annual Meeting in Atlanta - session honouring Lorenz (75th birthday) | (Plausible; not externally re-verified) | Probable OK |
| Modern ECMWF ensemble 50 perturbed members daily out to 15 days | OK | Current ECMWF EPS specification |
| GEFS 31 members | OK | Current NCEP GEFS specification |
Late papers and the Lorenz Center
| Claim | Verdict | Source(s) |
|---|---|---|
| 1986 “On the existence of a slow manifold” JAS 43, 1547-1557 | OK | Edward_Lorenz.md sec 10 |
| 1991 Nature 353 “Dimension of weather and climate attractors” | OK | Edward_Lorenz.md sec 10 |
| 1993 Essence of Chaos University of Washington Press | OK | Edward_Lorenz.md sec 10 |
| 1995 ECMWF Seminar “Predictability: A problem partly solved” introducing Lorenz 96 | OK | Wikipedia Lorenz 96 (seminar 1995, publication 1996); post matches |
| Lorenz 96: chain of K coupled ODEs with nearest-neighbour quadratic coupling and constant forcing | OK | Standard formulation |
| Canonical K=40, F=8 | OK | Standard formulation |
| 1998 with Emanuel “Optimal sites for supplementary weather observations” (adaptive sampling) | OK | Edward_Lorenz.md sec 10 |
| 2006 “Regimes in simple systems” | OK | Edward_Lorenz.md sec 10 |
| 2008 posthumous “Compound windows of the Henon map” Physica D 237:1689-1704 | OK | ScienceDirect: Physica D 237 issue 13 pp. 1689-1704, Aug 2008 |
| Lorenz Center founded 2011 by Dan Rothman and Kerry Emanuel | OK | lorenz.mit.edu; web search confirmation |
| Dean Marc Kastner backing | OK | Web search confirmation |
| Lorenz Center on top floor of Green Building (Building 54) | OK | Internal post claim, consistent with lorenz.mit.edu |
| Co-directed by Rothman and Raffaele Ferrari as of 2026 | OK | lorenz.mit.edu contact page lists both |
| 2018 Chaos and Climate symposium (Lorenz and Charney centennials) | OK | MIT EAPS history (referenced in Edward_Lorenz.md and various MIT News pieces) |
Awards
| Claim | Verdict | Source(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Fellow AAAS 1961 (post says “1961”) | OK | Edward_Lorenz.md sec 9 |
| Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal 1969 (AMS) | OK | Edward_Lorenz.md sec 9 |
| Meisinger Award 1969 | OK | Edward_Lorenz.md sec 9 |
| Symons Memorial Gold Medal 1973 (Royal Meteorological Society) | OK | Edward_Lorenz.md sec 9 |
| Elected NAS 1975 | OK | Edward_Lorenz.md sec 9 |
| Crafoord Prize 1983 (with Henry Stommel) | OK | Edward_Lorenz.md sec 9 |
| Kyoto Prize 1991 | OK | Edward_Lorenz.md sec 9 |
High-confidence verdict
The post is exceptionally faithful to its primary biographical source (Emanuel 2011 NAS memoir) and to the in-repo research compilations. The three brief-inherited errors (dentist, Starr, Lincoln) are explicitly flagged AND corrected within the post body itself, which is the right move.
Items flagged for caution / inheritance notes
-
“James Van Vleck” as Nobel laureate - The post says “Saunders Mac Lane, Marshall Stone, and James Van Vleck (the last of whom would later win the Nobel Prize in physics)” at Harvard. This is faithful to Emanuel NAS memoir p. 4, which writes “James Van Vleck (who was later awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics)”. However, the 1977 Nobel laureate in Physics is John Hasbrouck Van Vleck (“John H. Van Vleck”), not James Van Vleck. James Van Vleck (1812-1875) was a 19th-century mathematician at Wesleyan/Yale. This is an Emanuel error inherited into both
research/people/Edward_Lorenz.mdand the post.- Recommendation: Either footnote that Emanuel’s NAS memoir uses “James” but the Nobel laureate at Harvard at that time was John Hasbrouck Van Vleck (a position-of-honour issue, since correcting Emanuel mid-narrative is delicate), OR write the corrected name “John Van Vleck” (or “John Hasbrouck Van Vleck”) with a footnote acknowledging Emanuel’s NAS spelling as a primary-source quirk.
-
Sanders 1980 “bomb” paper had John R. Gyakum as co-author. The post says “Fred Sanders… who would coin the term ‘bomb’ for explosively deepening extratropical cyclones in his 1980 paper”. This is not strictly wrong (Sanders was first author), but acknowledging Gyakum is more accurate. Optional refinement only.
-
The Cessna monoplane at East Boston Airport. The post-caption says Rossby’s 1928 founding came “with Guggenheim Fund backing and a Cessna monoplane for upper-air observations from East Boston Airport”. The Cessna acquisition was actually 1931 per MIT history sources (Daniel Sayre flew it for six months). The caption could be read as conflating 1928 founding with 1931 aircraft purchase. Minor only.
-
Cancer cause for Charney. Post says “Charney died from lung cancer on 16 June 1981”. Wikipedia says simply “cancer” at the Sidney Farber Cancer Institute. The lung-cancer specification appears in several sources but not in all. Minor; date is correct.
-
“Stommel… shared the world with Lorenz until 1978”. Stommel left MIT for WHOI in 1978, returning to physical oceanography full-time. The post statement is correct in spirit. Minor.
-
Margaret Hamilton “arrived at MIT in the summer of 1959”. Wikipedia says “mid-1959”. Consistent.
External fetches log
(within tool budget of 30)
- Wikipedia: Edward Norton Lorenz
- Wikipedia: John Hasbrouck Van Vleck (confirmed: 1977 Nobel; not James Van Vleck)
- Direct PDF fetch of NAS Biographical Memoir of Lorenz (Emanuel 2011) - extracted with pdftotext
- Wikipedia: Jule Gregory Charney (1956 MIT move; died 16 June 1981 cancer at Sidney Farber)
- Wikipedia: Green Building (MIT) - I.M. Pei + Araldo Cossutta, 1962-1964, 18 floors, 84m, tallest Cambridge until 2019
- Wikipedia: Henry Stommel - 1963 to MIT from Harvard
- Wikipedia: LGP-30 - 113 tubes, 1450 diodes, 4096 31-bit words, 800 lb, $47,000
- Wikipedia: Solar eclipse 24 January 1925 - path of totality through CT, RI, MA
- Wikipedia: Lorenz 96 model - 1995 ECMWF seminar, 1996 publication
- Wikipedia: MIT - 1916 move Boston to Cambridge
- Wikipedia: Norman A. Phillips - left MIT for NMC 1974
- Wikipedia: Butterfly effect - Merilees concocted title, 139th AAAS 1972
- MIT Technology Review 2011 “When the butterfly effect took flight” - talk was delivered
- Web search: Merilees at NCAR 1972-74 on leave from McGill
- Web search: Bauer-Thorpe-Brunet 2015 Nature 525, 47-55 confirmed
- Web search: Lorenz 2008 Hénon paper Physica D 237, 1689-1704 confirmed
- Web search: Sanders 1980 “bomb” paper with Gyakum confirmed
- Web search: Lorenz Center 2011 founding + Kastner confirmation
- Web search: Feigenbaum 1978 publication year confirmed
- lorenz.mit.edu/about and meet-the-founders
- Wikipedia: Margaret Hamilton (software engineer) - Earlham 1958, MIT mid-1959
Conclusion
Verdict: POST PASSES VERIFICATION. The only material item is the inherited “James Van Vleck” error from Emanuel’s NAS memoir, which warrants a one-line correction or footnote. Everything else either checks out directly or is documented within the post itself as a flagged uncertainty (e.g. 0.506/0.506127 attributed to Gleick; spring 1945 Guam-vs-Okinawa Suppes-vs-Lorenz disagreement; January 1961 APS dating).