Lorenz was educated at Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He was since 1962 a professor at MIT.
Lorenz is one of the world’s foremost meteorologists and has worked extensively with mathematical models of the atmosphere. Instead of building complicated models that strive to give an as accurate as possible simulation of the behavior of the atmosphere, he has introduced extremely simple models, with few degrees of freedom, that are governed by non-linear equations, but which even so have many likenesses to the real, complicated climate system. Because of their simplicity, such models can be analyzed in detail, and Lorenz has been able to show, by using these models, that the predictability of the atmosphere is very limited. His results have also been of fundamental significance for the mathematical theory of non-linear dynamical systems and their passing to a chaotic stage.
Lorenz worked for one year, 1964–65, at Meteorologisk Institutt in Oslo and has since then been in close contact with the Norwegian milieu.
