Pål Wessel — Paul to his American friends — was born and raised in Sarpsborg, Norway. This began his time earning clout in the table tennis underworld, sharpening his piano skills, teaching geophysics and coding by night. After earning his BS and MS in applied geophysics at the University of Oslo in the early 1980s, Pål went on to get his PhD in geosciences from Columbia University in New York City, defending in the fall of ’89. It is there, with his officemate Walter H. F. Smith, that he started coding Generic Mapping Tools (GMT), an open-source software for the processing, displaying, and mapping of multi-dimensional data. GMT evolved rapidly, growing over the years with the help of many volunteers worldwide, and has become the staple tool for tens of thousands of researchers in the Ocean, Earth, and Planetary sciences.
In 1990, he moved to Honolulu for a postdoctoral position in the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (UHM). During his first week in Hawai‘i, he met his future wife, and they were married within that year. After joining the faculty of the Department of Geology and Geophysics (now Earth Sciences) UHM in 1991, he worked like an American for the next 31 years — 14 hours a day, 6 days a week — but still managed to share tight bonds with his family, including taking chunks of time off to go on numerous adventures.
As a professor at UHM, he wrote and contributed well over 100 peer-reviewed research publications (and still counting) with ~30,000 citations in plate tectonics, lithosphere mechanics, and his first love, scientific software development. Pål’s numerous awards include a University of Hawaiʻi Board of Regents’ Medal for Excellence in Research, Fellow of the Geological Society of America, Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, and the European Geoscience Union’s McHarg Medal in Geoinformatics. Pål was a trusted, kind, committed, and all-around exemplary colleague. He brought in millions of dollars in grant money, pushed for more inclusive and modernized working environments, served twice as department chair, started the NSF-REU program for undergraduates and the alumni days program for postgraduates, and wrote two textbooks that he distributed to students and instructors free of charge. As the department chair, the infamous shark aloha shirt defined his signature uniform during faculty meetings. Pål particularly loved teaching data analysis and programming classes, putting much effort and money into making his classes unforgettable with jokes, games, prizes, podcasts, and more.
Pål also worked on four seagoing research vessels, which took him to Barb ados, Iceland, Bergen, Chile, Easter Island, and American Samoa (for which he was chief scientist). On his sabbaticals to Norway (University of Oslo), Australia (University of Sydney), San Diego (Scripps Institute of Oceanography at UCSD), and England (Oxf ord), and through GMT, Pål forged enduring scientific partnerships with researchers on opposite ends of the Earth.
Pål loved his family and friends. Travels with his family were a mix of camping and enough low-budget hotels to satisfy Pål’s need for “luxury”. Before the kids arrived, he and his wife biked around Tasmania and southern Australia, hiked in the Peruvian Andes, journeyed into the upper Amazon, Bolivia, & northern Chile, camped in Iceland and Norway, and hiked the outer Hawaiian islands. With the addition of their two children, long camping road trips to exotic locales became a defining part of family life. Yearlong sabbaticals included memorable trips through the vast Australian outback, camping across North America, to the edges of active volcanoes in Hawai‘i, and through the varied countrysides of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and England.
Paul loved to cook “American” Thanksgiving dinners and made Christmas Eve a family tradition of blended cultures with his “wiki-leeks” soup, grilled Hawaiian soy-lime marinaded salmon, Aussie Queensland Blue (Kabocha) pumpkin, and the Norwegian “Wessel” cake. For Halloween, he always helped with the kids’ annual haunted hall (often dressed as Darth Vader). He met stressful situations with an unflappable and sometimes silly approach that relieved tension and brought lightness to life’s challenges.
Pål made countless friendships around the world, but always returned to the island of O‘ahu where he and his family made a home. In the fall of 2022, Pål and his wife retired to his home country of Norway, but managed to return to Hawai‘i in the summer of ’23 for one final visit.
Amongst colleagues, friends, and family, Pål was always known for his humor, kindness, care, and easygoing nature. He was very generous with his time, he was the embodiment of integrity, and he genuinely cared about others. He concluded a 3.5-year battle with cancer, on March 26, 2024, peacefully at home in Norway in the loving company of his wife and two children, and with the support of his two siblings and good friends.
Here is a look at the behind-the-scenes story of GMT:
