John Mason (meteorologist)

Sir Basil John Mason (born August 18, 1923 in Docking , Norfolk , † January 6, 2015 ) was a British meteorologist .

Mason made in 1948 with a degree in physics at Imperial College , where he since 1948 Lecturer was in meteorology and from 1961 Professor (for physics of clouds , cloud physics). He was then director of the UK Meteorological Office until 1983 . From 1986 to 1996 he was Chancellor and President of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST).

In the 1950s he carried out fundamental research, for example on the formation of raindrops in clouds and the formation of lightning in thunderstorms, about which he published a monograph in 1957. The Mason equation for droplet growth (or evaporation) is named after him. As director of the UK Meteorological Office, he modernized it and in 1965 saw to it that empirical forecasting methods were replaced by increasingly sophisticated numerical methods.

Since 2007 he has been an honorary member of the Institute of Physics , of which he was president from 1976 to 1978, whose Charles Chree Medal he received in 1965 and whose Glazebrook Medal he received in 1974. From 1968 to 1970 he was President of the Royal Meteorological Society , whose Symons Gold Medal he received in 1975, and from 1983/84 President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science . He was a Fellow of the Royal Society , whose Royal Medal he received in 1990 and of which he was Vice President and Treasurer from 1976 to 1986. He was a foreign member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences . He also received the Rumford Medal of the Royal Society in 1972 and was their Bakerian Lecturer (1971). In 1973 he was made Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) and knighted in 1979. He has twelve honorary doctorates. In 1979 he received the Naylor Prize . He died on January 6, 2015 at the age of 91.

Fonts

• The physics of clouds. Oxford University Press, 1957.
• The Meteorological Office (1965-83). ( PDF )

literature

• Chris K. Folland, John FB Mitchell: Pen portraits of Presidents - Sir Basil John Mason, CB, DSc, FRS . In: Weather . March 2019, doi : 10.1002 / wea.3442 .

Web links

• Honorary fellows: Sir John Mason. Biography at the Institute of Physics (IOP).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ (Basil) John Mason (1923-2015). Institute of Physics, accessed November 23, 2019 . 
2. ↑ Sir John Mason, meteorologist-obituary. In: The Daily Telegraph, January 15, 2015 (accessed January 16, 2015).