Scripps Institution of Oceanography

The title quote, which was recounted during these birthday festivities, derives from a dinner during Walter's earth rotation days. W. Markowitz of the U.S. Naval Observatory told of the logical scientist who set out to determine the cause of drunkenness. On successive days he consumed large quantities of scotch and water, bourbon and water, and vodka and water. Becoming drunk in each case he concluded that the water was responsible. Markowitz went on to find a parallel in the authorship of anumber of then-recent papers on the rotation of the earth (e.g. 49, 60, 72 in the bibliography), singling out Walter as the common ingredient in this infiltration of geophysicists into what had been the domain of astronomers.