Making waves
“When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”A version of this quote, originally penned by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in “The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes,” appears in a dog-eared copy of “Advanced Mathematical Methods for Scientists and Engineers” on a shelf in Pierre Lermusiaux’s office. The textbook, which he has kept since he was an engineering undergraduate in Belgium, introduces each chapter with a quote from the fictional sleuth — a literary prompt that pushed Lermusiaux, as a young student, to keep reading. The quote above is particularly apt for Lermusiaux, who has devoted his research, in part, to eliminating unlikely scenarios in ocean dynamics. Pierre Lermusiaux Photo: M. Scott Brauer Lermusiaux leads MIT’s Multidisciplinary Simulation, Estimation, and Assimilation Systems (MSEAS) group, which develops models and assimilation schemes to better predict ocean behavior for a wide range of applications — from planning...