Horace R. Byers the founding ol me institute of Santa Barbara, Calif. 93108 Meteorology at llie University of '

Abstract After the death in office of W. R. Gregg, it was recom- mended that Rossby be named Chief of the Bureau. An intimate glimpse into events at the start of the Institute But it did not seem wise for the Secretary of Agriculture, of Meteorology at the in 1940 is given from the viewpoint of the relatively primitive state of Amer- in whose Department the Bureau existed, to give the ican meteorology at the time. Personalities are discussed, office to a man who had just become naturalized as a with special emphasis on the powerful influence of Carl- citizen, so the position was offered to Gustaf Rossby from his desk as Assistant Chief of the U.S. Comdr. F. W. Reichelderfer of the U.S. Navy, and Weather Bureau and later as head of the fledgling institute. Rossby was made Assistant Chief for Research and Development. Rossby and Reichelderfer stepped up the in-service The Institute of Meteorology, later called the Depart- training programs that we had already started on a ment of Meteorology, was organized at the University modest scale, bringing in forecasters and others of of Chicago in the spring of 1940 to start with the subse- amazingly inadequate backgrounds to be taught funda- quent fall quarter. I can boast of being the initiator of mental meteorology and synoptic analysis. A program the development. But to understand how it came about, had been started to send a few highly qualified personnel it is necessary to go back a little to the late 1930s in to educational institutions. Victor Starr and Albert Sho- Washington. You would not believe the state that walter were sent to MIT and later Morris Neiburger, all meteorology was in when Harry Wexler and I and a of whom had previously been lost in the depths of the third, less well-known Massachusetts Institute of Tech- subprofessional grades of the Bureau. nology (MIT) product, Stephen Lichtblau, went to the The days—and nights, as a matter of fact—with Weather Bureau in 1935. We were the vanguard of the Rossby in Washington were hectic and exciting, as those new generation of adequately trained meteorologists, and of you who knew Rossby can well imagine. He never we were supposed to infuse up-to-date concepts, essen- did bring his family to Washington—he commuted about tially the Norwegian polar-front and air-mass theory, once a week back and forth to Hingham, Mass.—so he into the analysis and forecasting system of the Bureau. looked for company in the evenings, and we had typical To indicate the nature of the personnel of the Bureau Rossby discussion sessions after hours in a bar or restau- even as late as 1938-39, I can cite a survey I made then rant. One of the topics of discussion after September that showed that only 27% of the so-called professional 1939 was a scheme for getting J. Bjerknes established personnel had a college degree of any kind, and of with the creation of a new course in meteorology at the those, only half the degrees were in science or engineer- University of California—UCLA, as it turned out. Once ing. By the time Rossby came to Washington in 1939 as Rossby mentioned that he thought there should be Assistant Chief of the Bureau, there were five of us meteorology at an institution in the Middle West, too, from MIT, including Gardner Emmons and Charles and I remember his expressing himself as admiring Pierce, and one from the California Institute of Tech- Robert Hutchins, the controversial President of the Uni- nology (Cal Tech), Eugene Bollay, who, I believe, were versity of Chicago. This was more or less just talk, and the only ones with degrees in meteorology. At that time I don't believe it was mentioned again. there were three graduate programs in meteorology—at Later that year it was decided to expand the in-service MIT, started by Rossby in 1928, at Cal Tech, under training by conducting courses at the big District Fore- Beno Gutenberg, started in 1934, and at New York Uni- versity started by Athelstan Spilhaus a couple of years cast Center in downtown Chicago. (There were five such later. centers at that time—Washington, Chicago, New Or- leans, Denver, and San Francisco.) Although I liked Washington as a place to live and had no particular i Talk presented 4 December 1975 at a luncheon held in fondness for Chicago, I was discouraged by the frustra- Chicago, with the AMS, commemorating the 35th anniversary of the founding of the Institute of Meteorology at the Uni- tions of working in the Washington bureaucracy and versity of Chicago. volunteered to take on the Chicago assignment. Victor Bulletin American Meteorological Society 1343

Unauthenticated | Downloaded 10/04/21 01:16 PM UTC 1344 Vol. 57, No. 11, November 1976 Starr received a promotion and the assignment to go and Executive Secretary of the Institute of Meteorology, with me to Chicago. Vincent Oliver was our subprofes- Department of Physics, and ran the show the first year sional aide. Classes were started on the second of Janu- and, as some of you may recall, the main administrative ary 1940 in the dome of the old U.S. Court House. tasks fell to me during the entire Rossby regime. Victor January and February were almost the coldest on record Starr was appointed an Assistant Professor and Harry in Chicago, and the cold continued past Easter. Wexler was persuaded by Rossby to leave Washington By that time I was getting bored with teaching old and join us. Vincent Oliver also came with us to the Weather Bureau folks, pleasant and cordial as they were, University, and then Oliver Wulf, the expert on ozone and felt that I needed some contacts on a higher intel- and the high atmosphere, was assigned to us by the lectual plane. So I decided to pick up the telephone and Weather Bureau. call the Physics Department at the University of Chicago. To complete the staff, we had two statisticians who I had no idea whom I should talk to or who was head were sent to us by the U.S. Department of Agriculture of the department. With the usual telephone courtesy I to learn meteorology with a view toward using statistics was permitted to talk to Dr. Henry G. Gale, Chairman in long-range forecasting. They were Horace W. Norton of the Department of Physics and Dean of the Division and Glenn W. Brier. How this came about was also an of the Physical Sciences. I don't remember how I ap- item of interest, which I shall now relate. proached the subject, but the result was that Victor President Roosevelt's Secretary of Agriculture was Starr and I were invited to speak at the next Physics Henry A. Wallace. He had great schemes for a planned Colloquium. In my talk I explained how given values agricultural economy, but they went awry because of of thermodynamic properties of state could be repre- the severe droughts of the 1930s. Weather was the missing sented as surfaces in the atmosphere and developed the variable in his projections. Dr. Charles F. Sarle of the idea of isentropic charts, which were all the rage at that Bureau of Agricultural Economics worked on the prob- time. Victor, as I remember, talked about the energetics lem in cooperation with some statisticians at Iowa State, of the general circulation of the atmosphere. who had studied with the great Sir Ronald Fisher, the I later found out that Dean Gale had worked in the noted biological statistician who had authored the Signal Corps pilot-balloon project during the 1914-18 famous Design of Experiments. Sarle arranged for the World War and was familiar with the Norwegian de- use of funds under the Bankhead-Jones Act to support velopment of the polar-front theory. I was invited to a the work of Hurd C. Willett and Jerome Namias at lunch at the Quadrangle Club where I met Mr. Emery MIT in extended forecasting. When Rossby joined the T. Filbey, Vice-President of the University. Dean Gale Weather Bureau, Sarle joined with him, although the thought it would be worthwhile to have a meteorology Bureau was being transferred to the Department of program in the Department of Physics. Mr. Filbey asked Commerce. They arranged for the support of research me how much it would cost to run such a program. at the University of Chicago under the Bankhead-Jones Trying to sound very businesslike, I blurted out Act. Thus the new Institute at Chicago got off to an "$50 000 a year." This was a figure that somehow had early start with government-supported research. Namias lodged in the back of my mind from experience at MIT. was brought to Washington and Glenn Brier ended up In terms of today's dollars that would be about $250 000. there after two years at Chicago. About three weeks later at another lunch meeting, Mr. We started with about 15 students sent to us by the Filbey had the §50 000, from a donor who wished to Weather Bureau and Civil Aeronautics Administration remain anonymous. Who was this donor? Some months (now FAA), selected from among college graduates in later I found out that it had been none other than Mr. the physical sciences who had completed the CAA Sewell Avery, Chairman of the Board of U.S. Gypsum Civilian Pilot Training Program. Some of you may re- and later Chief Executive of . Those member that at that time the CAA supported pilot of you who were adults during World War II may re- training at many colleges and universities for the pur- member the photo widely circulated in the news media pose of stimulating interest in flying. Also, we had of Mr. Avery being carried bodily out of his office by Vincent Oliver who had the distinction of being the two soldiers when the Army took over his company for first person to register for meteorology at The Univer- defiance of wartime regulations concerning labor set- sity of Chicago. Many of you may know some of the tlements. members of the first class—Tom Gray of NOAA, Dean Gale brought up the question of who should Chankey Touart, formerly Air Force Cambridge Re- head the new program and suggested that we try to search Center geophysics administrator (now AFGL), and get someone of the Norwegian school such as J. a pair of local Chicago Weather Bureau meteorologists, Bjerknes. It was here that I became emphatic and in- Julius Badner and Stanley Bromberg. I remember a sisted that Carl Rossby was their man, pointing out his young lady, Joanne Gerould, now Joanne Simpson, was great originality and strong leadership. After some in- doing undergraduate work in the Physics Department. vestigating of their own, they contacted Rossby and he We used to see her in the halls and wonder who she was. accepted the job with the stipulation that he be granted Dean Gale had retired before the Institute got started leave to remain an additional year with the Weather that fall, and Arthur H. Compton, Nobel Prize-winning Bureau in Washington. I was named Associate Professor physicist, was our dean at our unauspicious beginning.

Unauthenticated | Downloaded 10/04/21 01:16 PM UTC Bulletin American Meteorological Society 1345 Well, I have told you how meteorology got started Fletcher, and Gene Bollay; Cal Tech had become more here, and it must seem strange to many of you that the industry oriented. program was so closely tied to the Weather Bureau. But So much for that first year. The second, third, fourth what other meteorology was there at that time? At MIT? years—well, I shan't go on. There was World War II. About 90% of those trained there had been military When Sewell Avery gave the first $50 000, he stated that officers and the rest of us were then in the Weather he thought meteorology would be important for the Bureau or busy at New York University planting the war effort. How prophetic he was! But the greatest years seed corn. At Cal Tech? No, although they had turned were in the postwar period when the Chicago school out good men with masters' degrees in meteorology such became recognized as a world-renowned center of meteo- as George Taylor, Joe George, Ben Holzman, Bob rological research.

announcements

NOAA weather modification report composition of the soil, Mars weather, and the search for A comprehensive report of 1975 commercial and govern- life. Fifty photographs of Mars taken from both the surface ment weather modification projects conducted in the United and from orbit are included. Copies of the book, costing States has been released by NOAA. The report, prepared by $2.00 each, are available from: National Technical Informa- NOAA's Environmental Modification Office, represents the tion Service, U.S. Dept. of Commerce, 5285 Port Royal Rd., most complete compilation available, since, by law, all indi- Springfield, Va. 22151. viduals and commercial firms engaged in weather modifica- tion projects must report to NOAA. The summary indicates Bathymetric data for coastal U.S. available that while the number of projects (72) in 1975 was slightly less than in 1974, the total projected target area was about The National Geophysical and Solar-Terrestrial Data Center 26 000 km2 greater. The 72 weather modification projects (NGSDC) has recently acquired a large data set consisting were conducted in 25 states. The most frequent method of of digital coastal bathymetric, bottom characteristic, and modification was cloud seeding with silver iodide; Dry Ice, marine obstruction data. Data are available for all coastal propane, and polyelectrolytes were also used. Ground-based waters of the United States and its possessions in a quanity equipment and airborne equipment were used almost equally exceeding that available on conventional National Ocean in the seeding techniques. Survey nautical charts. In addition to providing detailed information on the One hundred sixty-six magnetic tapes representing data various modification programs, the report lists all current from 125 1° X 1° areas off the Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific regulations concerning weather modification, including recent coasts of the United States are now available. The digitized amendments to the law. It also contains copies of revised data are from surveys completed between 1930 and 1965; reporting forms. A second section of the report, concerned post-1965 data are to be digitized in the near future. Data with selected domestic and foreign weather modification from all United States coastal waters, including Alaska and activities, includes information on national organizations and Hawaii, will be available within the next several years. Ap- meetings; reports on coordination, review, and commentary; proximately 97% of the data are soundings; the remainder evaluation of selected state operational programs; a review are bottom characteristics. Various plotter products are also of proposed legislation; discussion of legal actions; and, a available in addition to data on magnetic tape. report on international activities, including foreign programs. Catalogs indicating precise areas and densities of the The report is available, without charge, from: National hydrographic data available from NGSDC will be published Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, EM-5, 6010 Execu- early in 1977. Until then, consult NGSDC for specific details tive Blvd., Rockville, Md. 20852. on any area of interest. Tapes and documentation will be priced at $60 per tape, although prices for special tape First Viking 1 results published products such as gridded digital data may exceed $60 per An 80-page book, Viking 1 Early Results, the first formal re- tape, to cover computer costs. New plots will cost $100; port of early scientific results from the Viking mission to copies of existing plots will be $20. All inquiries should be Mars, has been published by NASA's Scientific and Techni- addressed to: National Geophysical and Solar-Terrestrial cal Information Office. In addition to providing a concise Data Center, Code D621, EDS/NOAA, Boulder, Colo. 80303 description of the Viking mission, the volume also describes (tel: 303-499-100, ext. 6338; FTS 323-6338). the Viking 1 Lander's first 25 days of operation on the sur- face of Mars. The results cover the Lander environment, (More announcements on page 1359)

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