Vilhelm Frimann Koren Bjerknes was born in Christiania (later Kristiania, now Oslo), Norway. He was the son of Carl Anton Bjerknes, a noted mathematician and physicist, and Aletta Koren, a minister's daughter.

The elder Bjerknes had devoted his career to hydrodynamic research, that is, the study of fluid-related movement. Vilhelm, in turn, was devoted to his father. He not only assisted with his father's research, but went on to overshadow him as a geophysicist, especially in meteorology. It was out of no less respect for his father that Vilhelm Bjerknes broke ranks with Carl Anton while attending the University of Kristiania during the 1880s. As an independent thinker, Vilhelm recognized errors in his father's research. He rectified and clarified his father's conclusions in a two-volume work published during the years just prior to Carl Anton's death in 1903.

Vilhelm's research in hydrodynamics evolved into studies of oceanographic and atmospheric...