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CHSTM 2020 Into the Clouds with Joanne Simpson

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CHSTM 2020 Into the Clouds with Joanne Simpson "Under Tropical Skies," https://www.chstm.org/tropicalskies, Jan. 22, 2020 1 Into the Clouds: Joanne Simpson and the Tropical Atmosphere Jim Fleming This presentation, based on the life and work of Joanne (Gerould) Simpson (1923-2010), examines the history of women in meteorology and the history of tropical meteorology in the context of Simpson's long and productive career as pioneer scientist, project leader, and mentor. It is based on the book, FIRST WOMAN: Joanne Simpson and the Tropical Atmosphere (Oxford University Press), scheduled to be published in June 2020. Joanne Simpson (1923-2010) transformed the science of the tropical atmosphere and set a course in science for professional women to follow. She had a lifelong passion for clouds and severe storms, flying into and above them, photographing them, modeling them, intervening in them, studying them from all angles, and mentoring a generation of tropical meteorologists. She flew across the globe into severe weather systems, constructed computer cloud models, experimented on clouds and hurricanes, held two university professorships, married three times, had two lovers (one secret), mentored a generation of meteorologists, male and female, struggled with migraine headaches and depression, blazed a trail for other women to follow, transformed the theory of convection, and opened up a new era of satellite remote sensing of the tropics. The story of her life and work, which will soon be published in full,1 presents a complex, braided narrative of a major life in science, a first-ever excursion into the history of tropical meteorology, and a reflection on the shifting fortunes of women scientists in the twentieth century. These multifaceted and interacting textual streams form a complex dynamic system, a strange and fascinating attractor. 1 Fleming, FIRST WOMAN. 2 Fig. 1. Joanne Simpson flying during the Florida Area Cumulus Experiment (FACE) in 1973. Credit: Joanne Simpson Papers 1890-2010, MC 779. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. 455, PD-17. Hereafter Simpson Papers. The tropical atmosphere is filled with clouds, most of which look like small puffy cotton balls (Fig. 2). These are called the trade cumuli, and they never grow large because they are being held down by a stable layer of air above them — the so-called “trade wind inversion,” in which the temperature increases with height. Some clouds remain buoyant throughout their lifetimes and become towering monsters reaching into the stratosphere. These “hot tower” thunderclouds bubble up and then seemingly boil as they grow to their uppermost limit, generating heavy rains, strong winds, and immense ice clouds at the very top (Fig. 3). Joanne’s famous hot tower hypothesis, developed jointly with Herbert Riehl, alludes to the competition between a cloud’s buoyancy and larger-scale environmental forces pushing it down. The hot tower theory valorizes those clouds that successfully break through the trade wind inversion to soar to the top of the lower atmosphere, carrying heat and moisture to the edge of the stratosphere and acting as spark plugs to drive the wind circulations of the planet. The metaphor of hot towers points to the battles Joanne waged between her sky-high 3 aspirations and the dark psychological and institutional forces dragging her down. Yet she prevailed, reaching the pinnacle of personal and professional accomplishment and conditioning the atmosphere for further breakthroughs for women in science and developments in the understanding of tropical meteorology. Fig. 2. Tropical trade cumulus clouds. Credit: Simpson Papers, 455, Photos. PD-9. 4 Fig. 3. “Hot towers” in the tropics. Credit: Simpson Papers, 455, Photos. PD-9. Is Joanne Simpson best remembered as a pioneer woman scientist or the best tropical scientist of her generation? She was both, with the emphasis on best scientist. In the face of severe and constrictive social pressures, she earned a Ph.D. in meteorology, the first woman in the United States to do so. Joanne was the first woman to win the Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal, the top award given by the American Meteorological Society (AMS). In addition she was the first female meteorologist inducted into the National Academy of Engineering, the first female president of the AMS, and the first woman to win the International Meteorological Organization (IMO) Prize. She did so by combining intellectual curiosity with hard work and dogged determination, all in a field dominated by men. Given her many accomplishments, what is currently known about Joanne among historians of science, meteorologists, and the general public is not close to what should be known about her. Several short, formulaic biographical sketches offer bare-bones outlines of Joanne’s scientific accomplishments but omit the flesh-and-blood details. Most media accounts 5 reinforced the overly narrow impression that she was an ambitious, single-minded scientist. Even her colleagues and close friends, who were aware of some of her personal challenges, generally perceived her as calm and collected, a pretty cool character. Her response: “Nothing could be farther from the truth.”2 The Simpson Papers at the Schlesinger Library in Cambridge, Massachusetts, are remarkable for including Joanne’s never-before-seen private diaries, revelations about her health, and her accounts of the conflicts within her family. They also contain captioned photographs, scrapbooks, research notebooks, published papers, and several artifacts, including a three- dimensional acetate cloud model, a silver iodide flare, and her ballet shoes. Starting in 1990 and continuing until 2005, she donated materials to the archive, adding descriptive and often self-reflexive accession notes to the collection, leaving a rich visual, textual, and material trail for the use of historians. In addition to Joanne’s life, the collection features extensive materials on the tropical atmosphere and on women in meteorology. It has important implications for gender studies, mentorship, and for the use and construction of archives. Joanne provided the following note in her archival collection, “To understand how a woman, or a man, for that matter, creates original work in any field, it is necessary to penetrate the emotional masks, and my masks have intentionally been hard to penetrate. I propose to take them off in the following chapters, in so far as that is possible.”3 Early years in the clouds Joanne was born in 1923 and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts where she benefitted from educational opportunities but suffered emotional neglect, especially from her mother. With her solidly upper middle class upbringing, she decided to attend college at the University of Chicago since she greatly admired the great books curriculum and the educational reforms instituted by its president, Robert Maynard Hutchins. At Chicago, Joanne flourished in a set 2 Simpson, Joanne. “Papers, 1890-2010, MC 779.” Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. (hereafter Simpson Papers), 1.14. Family history: Simpson's narrative re: difficult childhood, lifelong depression, detailed photograph captions with commentary, January 1996. 3 Ibid. 6 of first-year courses on astronomy, physics, politics, and psychology.4 The psychology course provided her with tools to analyze her own life and the behaviors of her friends, a practice she continued through life. She also studied meteorology and earned her pilot’s license. Motivated by the loss of friends in World War II, in 1942 Joanne decided to volunteer for military service, which most likely would have landed her in a desk job. Instead, the 19-year old college junior consulted with Carl-Gustaf Rossby, the leading atmospheric scientist in the world and chair of Chicago’s Institute of Meteorology, and decided to embark on a crash course in meteorology that would qualify her to train aviation cadets for the Army Air Corps.5 This led to a job as an instructor at New York University and convinced her to pursue graduate study at Chicago. Still, the path was all uphill. The faculty was all male, and the atmosphere towards women in the department was chilly, even cold. Even as a straight A student, Joanne was not offered a fellowship. The graduate student advisor one told her bluntly, “No woman has ever earned a Ph.D. in meteorology. No woman ever will. Even if you did, no one would give you a job.” Her first reaction was, obviously, to be very discouraged. She thought it over for a few days, then thought, “Well, I’ll show him if it’s the last thing I ever do.” She responded to discouragement with renewed determination to succeed by specializing in observations of clouds. But it was a hard road, especially without female role models or mentors.6 Her first husband, meteorologist Victor Starr divorced her soon after the birth of their son. Even her first Ph.D. supervisor, Rossby did not encourage her because he didn’t think there was any future at all for women in meteorology. He once told her work on cumulus clouds comprised a fine field for a “little girl” to work on, because it wasn’t important enough to interest real meteorologists. She was inspired by professor Herbert Riehl’s course in tropical meteorology, the first one ever offered anywhere, and the basis for his important book, Tropical Meteorology (1954). Joanne focused on observations taken by Woods Hole scientists of cumulus clouds and their surrounding environment in the trade winds north of Puerto Rico. In 4 Simpson Papers, 9.2.
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