He was a man who made waves—on the Arctic Ocean and in the scientific realm. Camping for months on frozen tundra energized Kenneth Hunkins, a tireless and empassioned oceanographer.
Kenneth Leland Hunkins, MS '57, PhD '60, died in Tappan, N.Y., on September 2. He was 86 and had suffered from Parkinson's disease.
Born in Lake Placid, N.Y., Hunkins developed an uncommon love for cold-weather adventure that would remain a staple throughout his life.
After earning his bachelor's degree in physics from Yale, he continued his studies at Stanford. His fondest memories from the Farm revolved around outdoor adventures, including organizing ski mountaineering trips for the Stanford Alpine Club.
Though he intended to pursue a career in oil exploration, his plan was derailed when a prominent seismologist recruited him for a research program that became known as the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University.
The program was designed to challenge the Soviet Union's superior knowledge of the Arctic region as the Cold War was heating up. The United States sought to gather basic data, and Hunkins soon found himself at Ice Station Alpha and other federal government posts in the Arctic. At Ice Station Alpha, set on a floe of sea ice about 500 miles north of Alaska, Hunkins used a newly engineered deep-sea camera to take the first photos of the Arctic's bottom-dwelling worms and shrimplike creatures.
His many contributions to the field of science include charting a previously unknown undersea mountain range that divides the Arctic, measuring an Ekman spiral (a sort of subsea whirlpool driven by the Earth's rotation), and collaborating with Danish and Norwegian researchers to erect ice camps on and off the coast of Greenland to gather more samples and measurements. His record of achievements lives on in an undersea mountain named Hunkin's Seamount and in a mollusk known as Colus hunkinsi.
Interviewed in 2007 about his work, Hunkins said, "You don't get that intimacy with ice unless you're living on it." According to his daughter Sarah, he made a point of bringing the spirit of the Arctic into his home, from gifts received from the people of Point Barrow, Alaska, to a polar bear gun, to flinging open the windows in the depths of winter to let the cold air rush in. "He was unusually even-keeled," Sarah added. "He just weathered things amazingly well."
In addition to Sarah, Hunkins is survived by his wife, Mei Bé; daughter Ann; stepchildren, Anna de Carvalho, Olivia Bé, Ariana Bé, Kenneth Bé and Shirley Bé; and first wife, Julia Bontjes, '59.
