Kirk Bryan Jr. (born July 21, 1929) is an American oceanographer who is considered to be the founder of numerical ocean modeling.
Starting in the 1960s at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, then located in Washington, D.C., Bryan worked with a series of colleagues to develop numerical schemes for solving the equations of motion describing flow on a sphere.
In addition to his important contributions in developing numerical codes, Bryan was also involved in early efforts to apply them to understanding the global climate system.
In 1969, a paper with Syukuro Manabe was the first to present integrations of a fully coupled atmosphere-ocean model, demonstrating the importance of ocean heat transport to the climate.
[2] Bryan has been awarded the Maurice Ewing Medal of the American Geophysical Union for his contributions to the field of ocean science.