Francis Reichelderfer
Francis Wilton Reichelderfer , nickname Reich , (born August 6, 1895 in Harlan (Indiana) , † January 26, 1983 ) was an American meteorologist. He was director of the US Weather Bureau from 1938 to 1963.
Life
Reichelderfer was the son of a Methodist minister and studied at Northwestern University with a degree as a chemical engineer in 1916, where he financed his studies himself through part-time jobs. He came to meteorology through his officer training with the US Navy in World War I, where he served as a meteorologist for submarine surveillance in Nova Scotia and became a Navy pilot himself.
1922 to 1928 he headed the meteorology (Navy Aerology) at the US Navy in Washington DC There he made the findings of the Bergen School from Norway, which analyzed the weather according to physical principles (movement of air masses in front systems) for forecast purposes was novel at the time. For this purpose he was sent to Bergen in 1931 by the US Navy . As usual in the US Navy, he also served as a meteorologist on various battleships. He made influential friends, for example, in the meteorologist Carl-Gustaf Rossby , Robert Millikan and Harry F. Guggenheim , who financed a weather forecast for flight operations in California in the late 1920s.
In 1938 he became director of the US Weather Bureau as successor to Willis Gregg (1880-1938) and left the US Navy. He immediately began to hire scientists like Rossby and Harry Wexler and to introduce the methods of the Bergen School. The high point of his career was the management of the US weather service during the Second World War, which brought with it a significant expansion of its resources, and he coordinated the use of modern technologies (radar, computers and numerical weather forecasting, basic research including the use of radioactive isotopes, cloud vaccination , Hurricane research, satellites) in the post-war years and 1950s.
In 1951 he was the first president and one of the founders of the World Meteorological Organization. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences .
The American polar explorer Finn Ronne named Cape Reichelderfer after him.
The American Meteorological Society has given him the Francis W. Reichelderfer Award for Meteorology in the Service of the Public since 1967 .
Web links
References and comments
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Reichelderfer, Francis |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Reichelderfer, Francis Wilton; Reichelderfer, Francis W .; Empire (nickname) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American meteorologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 6, 1895 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Harlan, Indiana |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 26, 1983 |