= Melvin E. Stern
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<Melvin E. Stern> was a physical oceanographer who developed a mathematical account of the instability now called <salt fingering>. His 1960 paper <The Salt-Fountain and Thermohaline Convection by Melvin E. Stern> explained how warm, saline water above cooler, fresher water can become unstable even when the combined density stratification is gravitationally stable.<The Salt-Fountain and Thermohaline Convection by Melvin E. Stern>[Abstract, unequal molecular diffusivities and laminar instability]{ref}
The decisive ingredient is that heat spreads by <heat conduction> much faster than salt spreads by <diffusion>. A displaced parcel can lose its temperature anomaly while retaining its salinity anomaly, changing the restoring or overturning density difference. Stern's paper made this into a stability problem and asked whether the resulting motions could matter for vertical ocean mixing. This connected small-scale molecular transport with a possible large-scale oceanographic consequence, while leaving its environmental importance as an observational question. He taught at Florida State University from 1987 to 2006.https://news.fsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/fstimes-2010-04-01.pdf#page=11[Florida State Times, April/May 2010, p. 11, institutional remembrance and portrait of Melvin Stern]{ref}
Portrait: https://news.fsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/fstimes-2010-04-01.pdf#page=11[Melvin Stern in the Florida State Times remembrance, page 11].
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