Biography

Lorenz was born in West Hartford, Connecticut, and his academic training resulted in a BA in mathematics from Dartmouth College in 1938, followed by an MA from Harvard in 1940. He then served for six years as a weather forecaster in the US Army Air Corps, and during military service he completed his Master of Science degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He became sceptical about the methods of weather-forecasting at that time, and, after years of study, concluded that large distortions in the atmosphere which affect weather patterns could be attributed to relatively small atmospheric occurrences.

In 1969, he described what is known as the "butterfly effect" – a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil could set off a tornado in Texas. What his ideas mean to managers is that forecasting is difficult, because behaviour known as deterministic chaos is likely to occur in functions of management – the "chaos theory", which means simply that small changes can produce major results.

Lorenz won numerous awards, honours and honorary degrees and was eventually an Emeritus Professor at MIT. 

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