Malcolm Walker was an academic at Cardiff University from 1967 to 1998, first as a Lecturer, then, from 1983, as Senior Lecturer and, from 1996, Deputy Head of the Department of Maritime Studies and International Transport. He was Education Resources Manager of the Royal Meteorological Society from 1998 to 2007. He is a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society and a Member of the American Meteorological Society. He co-authored The Ocean-Atmosphere System (with A. H. Perry, 1977). He chaired the Royal Meteorological Society's History Group from 1989 to 1999 and again from 2007 to the present. He was awarded the Group's Jehuda Neumann Memorial Prize in 2001 and the Royal Meteorological Society's Outstanding Service Award in 2007. Since 1980 he has had a strong scholarly interest in the history of ideas in meteorology and physical oceanography and the people behind those ideas. He has published numerous articles and lectured many times on this subject.