Milanković, Milutin (1879 - 1958)		Modern Contributors to Meteorology (post World War I)

Below are checklists of Modern Contributors to Meteorology on postal items (stamps, souvenir sheets, aerogrammes, postal cards, etc.) and numismatic items (banknotes and coins). Catalog numbers, years of issue, and notes on the items featured are given when available. If readers know of additional information or images, please contact the authors using the e-mail addresses at the bottom of this page.

The following persons are presented in chronological order. See the bottom of this page for footnotes that are common to all of the tables below.

Eckener, Hugo (1868 - 1954)

Eckener was the commander of the German airship Graf Zeppelin.

In 1926 Fridtjof Nansen founded the International Association for Exploring the Arctic by Means of Airship (commonly known as "Aeroarctic"). According to its statement of purpose, Aeroarctic would support "the scientific investigation and permanent control of the Arctic by means of explorations (voyages) and by the disembarking and support of wireless stations". To this end, in 1928 Nansen discussed with Eckener the idea that Aeroarctic might sponsor the Graf Zeppelin in an Arctic mission. Through Eckener's knowledge of airships and Nansen's knowledge of weather, the two agreed that such a voyage would be feasible. Nansen wrote that "it may be understood that the object of the expedition with the Graf Zeppelin … is not merely to fly across the North Polar region and to take a few accidental observations, but it is an important link in a great scientific programme, and will give results of importance to science". He expected that such a scientific program would provide information useful in weather forecasting, agriculture, shipping, trade and air traffic, but unfortunately died before it could take place.

The Aeroarctic/Graf Zeppelin Arctic expedition took place in 1931 with Eckener in command. The trip was a success on all fronts. A large amount of information was gathered related to meteorology, terrestrial magnetism and oceanography. Weather records were kept throughout the trip and meteorological isobaric maps were constructed three times per day. Molchanov sounding balloons were successfully launched from the airship near Franz Josef Land, Severnaya Zemlya and Vaigach Island. These balloons carried small radio transmitters that relayed measurements of temperature, pressure and humidity back to the airship.

Eckener would later write of the voyage that "my expectations, in so far as they were surpassed, were realized when I saw that, respecting the Arctic in summer, no anxieties need be felt regarding meteorological disturbances. Temperatures in the upper air regions are such that fears that an ice cap can be formed on the ship can be avoided by proper navigation".

Wilson, Charles Thomson Rees (1869 - 1959)

Wilson was a British physicist who shared the 1927 Nobel Prize in Physics with Arthur Compton. Wilson was cited for "his method of making the paths of electrically charge particles visible by condensation of vapour".

Wilson's primary scientific interest was in what is now known as cloud physics. He was inspired in 1894 to begin research into cloud processes after working at the Ben Nevis Observatory. He then worked until 1900 as a researcher at the Cavendish Laboratory (Cambridge University), where he developed his cloud chamber and began to investigate the behaviour of ions as cloud condensation nuclei. In 1911, he used the cloud chamber for the first time to see the tracks of individual alpha and beta particles and electrons. Around that time he also made observations of atmospheric electricity and developed several types of electrometers, and put forth a theory of thunderstorm activity.

Wilson used the cloud chamber to demonstrate the processes involved in the formation of cloud droplets and raindrops. His starting point was Aitken's work that showed that bits of dust in the air would serve as "nuclei" upon which moisture would condense in air cooling by expansion (due, for example, to rising motion). Wilson proved that condensation in pure air (with no dust particles at all) could only occur at much colder temperatures than it would in the presence of dust. The dust particles became known as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN). In the real atmosphere, CCN are considered to always be involved in the formation of cloud droplets. Wilson also showed that if the dust particles were negatively charged, then they would tend to condense more vapour than if they were positively charged. He suggested therefore that raindrops descending to the ground might in general be negatively charged, which would explain the negative charge of the Earth compared to the positive charge of the atmosphere.

Wilson also conducted some experiments with the cloud chamber in which he showed that passing certain types of radiation (such as ultraviolet light) through dustless air would produce apparent invisible nuclei on which vapour would condense as easily as on dust particles.

du Toit, Alexander Logie (1878 - 1948)

Du Toit was a South African geologist who was one of the strongest early supporters of Wegener's theory of continental drift. Du Toit's arguments were mostly geological, but he also was intrigued by the observations that some fossils from tropical plants had been found in Antarctica, and glacial deposits had been found in Africa. Like Wegener, du Toit realized that historical climate change could be explained if the continents had drifted from one climatic zone to another, and furthermore that a rearrangement of the Earth's continents and oceans could act to change climate patterns.

In his 1937 work Our Wandering Continents: A Hypothesis of Continental Drifting, du Toit expressed these climate-related ideas: he stated that different continents could show "in their fossil remains common or allied forms of terrestrial life, possessed during certain epochs of climates that may have ranged from glacial to torrid or pluvial to arid, though contrary to meteorological principles when their existing geographic positions are considered".

Milanković, Milutin (1879 - 1958)

Milanković was a Serbian engineeer and mathematician who was intrigued by the Ice Ages and and the climatic changes that must have caused the advance and retreat of the glaciers. In the WWI years he studied the interactions between solar radiation and the temperature of the Earth. His results were published in Paris in 1920 in a monograph entitled Théorie mathématique des phénomènes thermiques produits par la radiation solaire (Mathematical theory of thermal phenomena caused by solar radiation). In it, he presented a curve describing the solar insolation at the Earth's surface. Köppen and Wegener used it in their 1924 work Klimate der geologischen Vorzeit (Climates of the Geological Past). In 1927 they invited Milanković to collaborate with them on their Handbuch der Klimatologie (Handbook on Climatology). He wrote the introduction to the Handbook: Mathematische Klimalehre und astronomische Theorie der Klimaschwankungen (Mathematical science of climate and astronomical theory of the variations of the climate). The ideas contained therein would form the basis of a theory that he formulated in the 1930s. That theory, which came to be known by the name of "Milanković cycles", presents a relationship between long-term cycles in the Earth's climate and changes in its orbital eccentricity, axial tilt and precession. The precession changes slightly in an approximate 26,000 year cycle. The Earth's orbit about the sun changes in 100,000 year and 400,000 year cycles. The tilt of the Earth's axis changes in a cycle of about 41,000 years. Milanković derived the mathematical formulas that describe these cycles and showed how they can interact so that at some times there is more sunlight striking the Earth, and at others there is less. When there is less, snow and ice can accumulate and glaciers can advance, forming an Ice Age. When there is more, there is warming and the ice retreats. Milanković presented the complete theory in his 1941 work Kanon der Erdbestrahlung und seine Anwendung auf das Eiszeitenproblem (A Study of Insolation reaching the Earth and its Application to the Problem of the Ice Ages).

The theory of Milanković cycles remained controversial, but a paper published in the journal Science in 1976 ("Variations in the Earth's orbit: pacemaker of the Ice Ages" by Hayes, Imbrie and Shackleton) confirmed the basic ideas. In it, measurements from deep ocean sediment cores along with new understanding of celestial mechanics were used to show that variations in solar insolation were the main cause of the advance and retreat of ice sheets in the Quaternary period.

Wegener, Alfred (1880 - 1930)

Alfred Wegener was a German geophysicist, Arctic explorer and meteorologist who advanced the theory of continental drift.

Wegener received a doctorate in astronomy in 1904, but found that he was more interested in geophysics, meteorology and climatology. At that time the telegraph, Atlantic cable and wireless were beginning to supply the data necessary for analysis and forecasting of storms. In 1905 he went to work at the Royal Prussian Aeronautical Observatory near Berlin, where he studied the atmosphere with kites and balloons. He was then invited to join a 1906 Danish expedition to Greenland's northeast coast. This was a dream come true for Wegener. In Greenland from 1906 to 1908 Wegener became the first person to use kites and tethered balloons to study the polar atmosphere. From 1909, he lectured on meteorology and astronomy at the University of Marberg. In 1911 he collected his meteorology lectures into a book, Thermodynamik der Atmosphäre (The Thermodynamics of the Atmosphere), which became a standard text in Germany.

Wegener also worked in the area of cloud and precipitation physics. As early as 1784, Benjamin Franklin had speculated that rainfall at the ground began as some form of snow in the clouds. Wegener considered that water can exist in the atmosphere in supercooled liquid form (at a temperature below 0°C), and also that the saturation vapour pressure over liquid water is greater than that over ice. He concluded that as a result, cloud ice crystals would necessarily grow at the expense of supercooled liquid cloud droplets. The resulting large ice crystals would be Franklin's 'snow', which could melt to form raindrops as it fell. These ideas were contained in Thermodynamik der Atmosphäre. Wegener never got the chance to document this process in real clouds, but Tor Bergeron and Walter Findeisen proved the theory in the 1930s. The process, often now known as the Bergeron-Findeisen process, is more correctly referred to as the Wegener-Bergeron-Findeisen process.

Wegener went back to Greenland in 1912-13 and crossed the Greenland ice cap with Danish explorer J.P. Koch and two others in a trip from Dove Bay on the east coast to Upernavik on the west coast. The data that he gathered during this journey made him one of the world's leading experts on polar meteorology and glaciology. According to fellow meteorologist and Greenland explorer Dr. Johannes Georgi, "Wegener was the first to trace storm tracks over the Greenland ice cap". He continued to work at Marburg until 1919, when he was appointed head of the Departement of theoretical meteorology at the German Hydrographic Office (The Deutsche Seewarte) in Hamburg. In 1924 he was appointed professor of Meteorology and Geophysics at the Institute of Physics, University of Graz. In addition to his continuing interest in continental drift and polar meteorology, he also conducted investigations concerning processes in the upper atmosphere and the aurora borealis. Furthermore, he also studied optical effects in the frigid air above the Greenland ice cap, where spectacular optical phenomena can occur in the presence of ice crystals. In a 1926 article, Wegener explained the formation process of two rare arcs that can appear opposite the sun in the presence of ice crystals. The arcs were then named in his honour.

In addition to his meteorological work, Wegener originated a revolution in geophysics: the idea of continental drift. This theory accounted for geological and fossil evidence that ancient climates had been vastly different from modern ones. Wegener thought that actual motion of continents might explain this climatic puzzle, so he and the climatologist Wladimir Köppen (who was also his father-in-law) plotted ancient deserts, jungles and ice sheets on paleogeographic maps based on the theory. The result was a plausible picture of past climates. Evidence of an ice age from some 280 million years ago, for example, scattered over almost all the Earth in modern times, clustered neatly around the South Pole in Wegener's map. This was because Africa, Antarctica, Australia and India had once comprised a southern hemispheric supercontinent (Gondwanaland). Wegener considered such paleoclimatic validation one of the strongest proofs of his theory. Conversely, continental drift has since become one of the main supporting principles of paleoclimatology. The South African geologist Alexander du Toit, working more or less independently, reached similar conclusions to those of Wegener and so became one of the early supporters of his theory.

Wegener returned to Greenland in the spring of 1930 as the leader of an expedition designed to systematically study the Greenland ice cap and its climate. Ernst Sorge, Johannes Giorgi and Fritz Lowe were part of this team. During this expedition, three research stations were set up: West camp, East camp, and Eismitte (Middle Ice camp, located on the ice cap at some 3000 m elevation). Unfortunately, in November 1930 Wegener and Rasmus Villumsen died while trying to reach West camp from Eismitte. Wegener was only 50.

Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine research, established in 1980, was named in honour of Wegener.

Other selected publications by Wegener:

• Durch die weiße Wüste (The Crossing of the Ice Cap, 1912-13) (1919)
• The Origin of Continents and Oceans (published in German in 1912 and 1915, and translated to other languages in 1922)
• Die Klimate der Geologischen Vorzeit (The Climates of the Geological Past) (with W. Köppen, 1924).

Regener, Erich (1881 - 1955)

Regener was a German physicist and professor of physics at Berlin and Stuttgart. He was also the director of the early Max Planck Institute for Stratospheric Physics in the years between the two World Wars (this Institute is now known as the Institute for Aeronomy). His research with upper air balloons launched from the Institute helped to define the chemical composition of the troposphere and the stratosphere. One particular area of interest for Regener was the influence of ultraviolet (UV) light on the chemical equilibrium between molecular oxygen (O₂) and ozone (O₃). In 1934 he became the first scientist to directly measur the absorption of UV energy in the ozone layer. He was therefore an important precursor in studies of the ozone layer. He also studied cosmic rays in the stratosphere.

Langmuir, Irving (1881 - 1957)

Irving Langmuir was an American physical chemist who spent much of his career with the General Electric corporation. He was awarded the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1932, but is remembered by meteorologists mostly for his pioneering work in the area of weather modification through cloud seeding.

He invented the Langmuir probe, an instrument designed to measure the properties of ionized gases (known as 'plasma', a term that he coined in 1927) in the upper atmosphere. In 1946, a Langmuir probe and other instruments were carried aloft from White Sands Missile Range by a V2 rocket. Although the V2 failed, the launch marked the first attempt to explore the upper atmosphere through direct measurements by rocket-borne instruments.

Langmuir had a strong interest in meteorology, particularly in the area of cloud microphysics. In the war years, he was involved in research on smoke screens and on aircraft de-icing capabilities. He and his colleague Vincent Schaefer invented the artificial fog smoke screen generator widely used during WWII. This work led him to think about clouds in general, and airborne particulates and ice nucleation in particular. In 1946, Langmuir and Schaefer realized that clouds might be modified by "seeding" them with dry ice pellets. The dry ice supplied to the cloud would form extra ice particles to which cloud water would migrate, resulting in more cloud droplets and potentially more rain. They demonstrated the effect later that year. Their work continued in the post-war years with dry ice and also silver iodide as seeding agents. The hope was that a certain amount of seeding could induce clouds to produce rain, while overseeding could potentially reduce hail and so reduce hail damage to crops. The work was controversial, and considerations of possible financial liability led GE to turn the program over to the military in 1947. The military continued to conduct cloud seeding experiments, some of which were carried out in the area of Socorro, New Mexico, which since 1963 has been home to the Irving Langmuir Laboratory for Atmospheric Research.

Piccard, Auguste (1884 - 1962)

Auguste Piccard was a Swiss physicist and aeronaut who explored both the heights of the atmosphere and the depths of the ocean. He and his twin brother Jean were pioneers in the balloon exploration of the stratosphere. Scientific balloon ascents in the 19th and early 20th centuries had been done in an open nacelle, but in the 1920s the Piccards developed pressurized nacelles and new high-altitude balloons. On 27 May 1931, with his colleague Paul Kipfer, Auguste Piccard lifted off from Augsberg, Germany in the balloon FNRS and made the first manned balloon flight into the stratosphere, reaching a record altitude of about 15.8 km. On 18 August 1932, Piccard and Max Cosyns went even higher (approximately 16.2 km). During his flights, Piccard made measurements of cosmic rays in the stratosphere and also recorded stratospheric temperatures. Other aeronauts followed Piccard's lead in exploring the stratosphere by balloon, including Jean Piccard and the Americans Albert Stevens and Orville Anderson.

Following his work with stratospheric balloons, Auguste Piccard turned his interest to the exploration of the ocean depths. As a boy he had dreamed about pressurized gondolas that could be used underwater, and eventually realized that a bathyscaphe could be thought of as an underwater balloon that uses gasoline for lift, since gasoline is lighter than water, just as hydrogen and helium provide the necessary lift for atmospheric balloons because they are lighter than air. It is in this sense that he later wrote in his book "Earth, Sea and Sky" that "it was the submarine that led me to the stratosphere".

In the latter half of the 1930s and in the 1940s Jean Piccard worked to improve the materials used in high altitude balloons. Polyethylene eventually became the balloon fabric of choice. It was light, not too expensive, and allowed balloons to ascend to around 30 km, where scientific measurements could be made with almost no atmospheric interference. Instruments aboard high altitude balloons have since studied ozone, carbon dioxide, carbon-14, nitrous oxide, nitrogen, dust particles, solar energy, cosmic rays and radiation in the high atmosphere. Eventually James van Allen would launch scientific rockets from high altitude balloons to get atmospheric measurements from even higher levels. All this work was possible in part as a result of the scientific legacy of the Piccard brothers.

¹ This Weraba cinderella (vignette) contains reproductions of Switzerland 496, United States 1556, and Russia 4044

Piccard, Jean (1884 - 1963)

Jean Piccard was a Swiss engineer and aeronaut who became a U.S. citizen in 1931. He and his twin brother Auguste were pioneers in the balloon exploration of the stratosphere. Scientific balloon ascents in the 19th and early 20th centuries had been done in an open nacelle, but in the 1920s the Piccards developed pressurized nacelles and new high-altitude balloons. In Germany in May 1931, Auguste Piccard and Paul Kipfer in the balloon FNRS became the first men to rise into the stratosphere. Meanwhile, in the U.S. Jean Piccard was the leader of the team that was working with the Century of Progress stratospheric balloon. It included the Nobel laureates Arthur Compton and Robert Millikan. After an aborted demonstration flight at the Chicago World's Fair in August 1933, the team conducted a successful scientific flight in November of that year. During that flight, which reached an altitude of 18.6 km, various scientific measurements were conducted in the stratosphere. The balloon carried instruments to measure cosmic rays, a polariscope to measure the polarization of light at high altitudes, equipment to take air samples and an infrared camera and spectrograph to study ozone. Nearly a year later, on 23 October 1934, Jean Piccard and his wife Jeannette made what turned out to be the last flight of the Century of Progress. They reached an altitude of 17.5 km.

In the latter half of the 1930s and in the 1940s Jean Piccard worked to improve the materials used in high altitude balloons. Polyethylene eventually became the balloon fabric of choice. It was light, not too expensive, and allowed balloons to ascend to around 30 km, where scientific measurements could be made with almost no atmospheric interference. Instruments aboard high altitude balloons have since studied ozone, carbon dioxide, carbon-14, nitrous oxide, nitrogen, dust particles, solar energy, cosmic rays and radiation in the high atmosphere. Eventually James van Allen would launch scientific rockets from high altitude balloons to get atmospheric measurements from even higher levels. All this work was possible in part as a result of the scientific legacy of the Piccard brothers.

Stevens, Capt. Albert W. (1886-1949) Anderson, Capt. Orville A. (ca 1890? - ?)

Captains Albert Stevens and Orville Anderson of the U.S. Army Air Corps were military aeronauts who made stratospheric balloon flights soon after the pioneering stratospheric work of Auguste Piccard and Jean Piccard. Scientific observations were an important part of the ascents made by Stevens and Anderson. On 27 July 1934 in the Explorer-I hydrogen balloon they reached 18.3 km. On 10 November 1935, in a mission sponsored by the National Geographic Society, they flew the Explorer-II helium balloon to an altitude of 22 km above South Dakota. This was a record that would stand for 21 years. During the flight, measurements were made of the temperature and pressure, the chemical composition of the air, the vertical distribution of the concentration of ozone, and the intensity of cosmic rays. Data on the propagation of radio waves in the high atmosphere were also collected. Stevens and Anderson also brought back the first colour photographs ever taken from the stratosphere. They showed the land below, the curvature of the Earth and the visual division between the troposphere and the stratosphere. Careful measurements of the balloon's altitude were made using photographs of terrain and angular measurements from the ground. The vertical distributions of air pressure and temperature were also carefully recorded. After the flight, those data were used to calculate the balloon's altitude through the use of the meteorological hydrostatic equation (a relationship involving pressure, temperature and height above the ground). The heights thus calculated were then compared with the other, independent measurements of altitude to verify the accuracy of the hydrostatic equation.

Dobson, Gordon Miller Bourne (1889 - 1976)

Dobson was an English physicist and meteorologist. He took a position as University Lecturer in Meteorology at Oxford in 1920. There he studied meteor trails and with F. A. Lindemann deduced that there must exist a region above the tropopause in which the temperature increased substantially with height (this region is the stratosphere). Dobson then concluded that the warming of the stratosphere must be caused by the absorption of solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation by ozone. He proceeded to measure the ozone by observing its absorption in the solar UV spectrum following the technique of Fabry and Buisson. To this end he built his first spectrograph in 1924, and with a year had used it to demonstrate the main features of the seasonal variability of total column ozone and also the correlation between the ozone amount and the meteorological conditions in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere. He continued this work through the late1920s with more extensive measurements made by his instrument at locations throughout the world. Further development of his spectrograph led to the instrument that became known as the Dobson spectrophotometer, which became the international standard for ozone measurement. The units used to measure ozone came to be known as "Dobson Units" (DU). Modern measurements of total column ozone are still expressed in Dobson Units.

In 1926 Dobson presented the Halley lecture on "The uppermost regions of the Earth's atmosphere" in which he presented a summary diagram of those regions. A year later he was elected to a new Readership in Meteorology. In the 1930s he developed an interest in atmospheric pollution, and from 1934 to 1950 served as Chairman of the Atmospheric Pollution Committee of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, where he directed the development of methods to measure smoke, deposited particulate matter and sulphur dioxide.

In order to understand and forecast atmospheric conditions at levels where condensation trails from aircraft were occurring, Dobson studied stratospheric humidity during World War II. To make the necessary measurements, he designed a frost-point hygrometer, whose measurements revealed that the stratsophere was very dry (later he would work with Alan Brewer to explain this unexpected dryness through a theory that became known as the "Brewer-Dobson circulation"). Dobson's studies of humidity and contrails in turn led him to examine the mechanism by which water drops freeze. He and his students built cloud chambers in which they could examine the phenomenon, and showed that drops of pure water would not spontaneously freeze until a temperature of -40°C was reached, while drops that contained various impurities would freeze at warmer temperatures.

Dobson was awarded the Symons Gold Medal of the Royal Meteorological Society in 1938, and was the president of the Society from 1947 to 1949.

In the early 1950s Dobson and his colleages developed a chemical technique for making ozone observations from aircraft. In 1956 some 44 Dobson spectrophotometers were in operation throughout the world and many more were built and put into operation for the International Geophysical Year. Dobson continued his work on ozone until the end of his life.

Kezhen, Zhu (Coching Chu) (1890 - 1974)

Kezhen was a meteorologist and geographer who is considered to be the founder of modern meteorology in China. After studies in the USA (Ph.D. in meteorology from Harvard), he taught meteorology at schools in Wuhan, Nanjing, Shanghai and Tianjin. He was the chairman of the Department of Meteorology at Nanjing University from 1920 to 1929. In 1929 he became the director of the Chinese Meteorological Research Institute of the Central Academy. During his career he served as president of the Chinese Meteorological Society and the Chinese Geographical Society as well as several other scientific bodies.

Kezhen specialized in climatology, and introduced the science of phenology (the study of periodic natural cycles related to climate, such as the migration of birds) to China, and established a Chinese phenological observing network in 1934. He was the author of a detailed study of the Chinese climate over the last 5000 years (A Study of Climate Changes in China over the Past Five Millenia) based on a temperature index that he created. Kezhen considered that the study of historical climate changes could be useful in forecasts of future climate changes. He published some 300 scientific papers in his areas of interest, which included the study of typhoons and monsoons. In addition to the climate study mentioned abouve, his major meteorological publications include Phenology; An Outline of Meteorology in China; The Interrelationship between Meteorology and Agriculture; A Few New Facts in the Centre of a Typhoon; A New Classification of Typhoons in the Far East; The Place of Origin and Recurvature of Typhoons; Movements of Air Currents in China; The Southeast Monsoon and Rainfall in China; Relations of Climate to Men and Other Lives; On the Characteristics of China's Climate and the Relations between those Characteristics and Food Production; China's Subtropical Zone; and A Preliminary Study of Climate Types of East Asia.

Another of Kezhen's interests was the history of science, and particularly the ancient scientific legacy of China.

Watson-Watt, Robert Alexander (1892 - 1973)

Watson-Watt was a Scottish physicist. He worked at the British Meteorological Office in 1917 on the radio detection of thunderstorms. This was an important project due to the hazard such storms posed to aviators. This work advanced in the 1920s and 30s to the point where he was able to locate aircraft through a radio-pulse technique. Watson-Watt is credited with the development of the first workable radar system in the 1930s (RADAR ia an acronym for RAdio Detection And Ranging). He was appointed Director of Radio Research at the British National Physical Laboratory in 1935. In 1942, he was knighted for his work on radar.

Watson-Watt's work involved consideration of the structure of the upper atmosphere and its effect on radio waves. One particular upper layer was the source of various types of interference and reflections of these waves. In 1926 he coined the term "ionosphere" for this layer and proposed it in a letter to the United Kingdom Radio Research Board. The term was adopted and came into common use some years later. Gauss had hypothesized some 100 years earlier that such a layer must exist.

Demuyter, Ernest (1893 - 1963)

Demuyter was a Belgian Army lieutenant and balloon pilot who flew the balloon Belgica to victory in the Gordon Bennett balloon race in 1920, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1936 and 1937.

Early in his career Demuyter was employed as a meteorology instructor. This background stayed with him throughout his life as a balloonist.

Meteorology was not closely considered in hot air ballooning in the early 20th century. Speaking of the 1913 Gordon Bennett race, Demuyter noted that "meteorology in those days was in its childhood. Of course the pilots got handed out the information from all meteorological stations around the world, and often the forecast for beginning rain, snowfall or storm was true. But there were no weather maps as we know today from the television every evening. There was also no weather briefing before launch. Everybody got his own information. What he then concluded and how he put it to practice was his own affair". Demuyter was convinced that the best balloon pilots were those who were also meteorologists, or at least very familiar with meteorology. Those pilots could put meteorological information to good use. Demuyter was one of the first pilots to carefully consider the influence of meteorological conditions in his planning for balloon flights and competitions. For example, he pointed out that "every balloon pilot knows (or should know) that the wind turns right [i.e. clockwise] in a high pressure area and counter clockwise in a low. Today we [also] know the gradient winds, floating almost parallel to the isobars".

Sorge, Ernst (1899 - 1946)

Sorge was a German geographer, glaciologist and polar researcher who participated in the German Greenland expedition of 1930 with meteorologists Alfred Wegener, Johannes Giorgi and Fritz Lowe. The expedition studied the meteorology and glaciology of the Greenland ice cap. Unfortunately Wegener died during this expedition.

Georgi would later describe Sorge's work: "Sorge measured the density of blocks of nevé cut at different levels of his shaft. He succeeded, with this primitive equipment, in distinguishing the strata of the precipitation of summer and winter, and of measuring its content of water, for 20 years back to 1911!" This pioneering research on the glaciology and climatology of Greenland was conducted during the winter of 1930-31 at the Eismitte station on the Greenland ice cap.

von Neumann, John (1903 - 1957)

John von Neumann was born in Hungary, but immigrated with his family to the United States in 1930. He was a mathematician, computer scientist and meteorologist who pioneered the use of computers in applied scientific problems, including meteorology.

In 1946 he announced his "intention of developing a very high speed electronic computing machine". In collaboration with the U.S. Weather Bureau, the Navy and the Air Force, he formed the Meteorology Group at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study (IAS). His computer work proceeded apace at the IAS during the late 1940s, culminating in the revolutionary computing machine ENIAC. The world's first computerized weather forecast was produced in 1950 by ENIAC. This pioneering work in numerical weather prediction (NWP) was described in a scientific paper written by von Neumann and his colleagues Jule Charney and Ragnar Fjörtoft in 1950. Entitled Numerical Integration of the Barotropic Vorticity Equation (published in the meteorological journal Tellus, Vol 2, pp 237-254), it is the earliest scientific paper in the area of NWP.

Von Neumann also pursued his other meteorological interest: "calculating the effects of human intervention in the natural processes of the atmosphere". He proposed to apply computer techniques to study the idea of adding dye to the polar icecaps to decrease the amount of solar energy they would reflect. He claimed that the procedure could warm the Earth enough to make the climate of Iceland approximate that of Hawaii. He also predicted the warming of the climate due to carbon dioxide release.

In 1953, the U.S. Advisory Committee on Weather Control was created to oversee American weather modification and cloud seeding activities, such as those originated by Irving Langmuir and Vincent Schaefer after WWII. Von Neumann became involved with the Committee in 1955 (at the time he was also a commissioner of the Atomic Energy Commission, and so was involved with the development and stockpiling of nuclear weapons). He believed that in weather control as well as in the nuclear arms race, the U.S. had to stay ahead of the Soviets at all costs. Like the U.S. military, he considered weather control as a potential tool for achieving global dominance, and as part of the Advisory Committee he participated in a panel on the "possible effects of atomic and thermonuclear explosions in modifying weather". Another area of discussion was how Soviet harvests might be ruined by a US-induced drought. Yet another was that atomic bombs detonated off the west coast of Africa at the onset of the monsoon might improve the climate of the drought-prone Sahel region. As von Neumann naively told Congress in 1956, "our knowledge of the dynamics in the atmosphere is rapidly approaching a level that will make possible, in a few decades, intervention in the atmospheric and climatic matters. It will probably unfold on a scale difficult to imagine at present. There is little doubt one could intervene on any desired scale, and ultimately achieve rather fantastic effects". But already in 1957, Roger Revelle and Hans Seuss were raising warning flags with their ominous findings on increasing CO₂ levels in the Earth's atmosphere which hinted at anthropogenic global warming. It seems that von Neumann never considered, at least in public, that major weather modification projects carried out in the atmosphere might spiral out of control and lead to unexpected effects.

van Allen, James (1914 - 2006)

Van Allen was an American physicist and space scientist. After WWII, he experimented with captured German V2 rockets and directed the development of a smaller, less-expensive sounding rocket for high altitude use. Known as the Aerobee, this new rocket became the mainstay of American upper atmospheric research. Van Allen also developed various instrument packages used in upper atmospheric (and eventually near-space) scientific measurements. He became the chairman of the Upper Atmosphere Rocket Research Panel (which became the Rocket and Satellite Research Panel) in 1948.

In 1952 van Allen developed "rockoons" - balloons carrying sounding rockets. A small rocket launched from a balloon at around 20 km altitude could fly up to nearly 100 km, allowing scientific measurements to be made in the highest and thinnest reaches of the atmosphere. Cosmic ray intensity was measured, along with the interaction of cosmic rays with the atmosphere near the North Pole. As the rockets fell back into the atmosphere, they continued to measure cosmic rays, pressure, temperature, heat, and other conditions. These early experiments suggested the existence of trapped radiation in near-Earth space. This was later confirmed by satellite measurements and the radiation areas became known as the van Allen radiation belts. In 1954 a rocket launched into the aurora by van Allen's team observed for the first time auroral electrons.

Van Allen was one of the precursors of the International Geophysical Year (IGY). In 1950 he invited a group of colleagues to his home to discuss the technologies developed during WWII, such as rockets and radar, and concluded that they could be used in a new round of international geophysical research. With the first and second International Polar Years (IPYs) in mind as models, the group through Lloyd Berkner proposed to the International Council of Scientific Unions that a Third IPY be held in 1957 (25 years after the Second IPY). The proposal came to fruition and the 3rd IPY, renamed the IGY since it was planned for the whole world rather than only the polar regions, took place from 1 July 1957 through 31 December 1958 (actually a period of 18 months). It was a coordinated, comprehensive, international geophysical study of the Earth. As part of the IGY, the first artificial Earth satellites were launched by the USSR and the USA. They provided scientific information on the near-space environment of the Earth. In particular, data from American satellites Explorer-1 and Explorer-3 were used by van Allen to prove the existence of belts of radiation around the Earth (starting at an altitude of about 100 km) that came to be known as the van Allen radiation belts.

Van Allen wrote or collaborated on a large number of papers relating to cosmic ray research in the upper atmosphere. Here are some of van Allen's presentations and papers related to upper atmospheric research other than cosmic ray research:

• Van Allen, J. and M. Gottlieb, The Inexpensive Attainment of High Altitudes with Balloon-Launched Rockets, Rocket Exploration of the Upper Atmosphere, edited by R.L.P. Boyd and M. J. Seaton. London, Pergamon Press, 1954, pp. 53-64.
• Van Allen, J., Balloon-Launched Rockets for High-Altitude Research, Sounding Rockets, edited by Homer E. Newell, Jr. (New York, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1959, Chap. 9, pp. 143-164.
• Van Allen, J., L. W. Fraser and J. Floyd, The Aerobee Sounding Rocket: A New Vehicle for Research in the Upper Atmosphere, Science, 108, pp. 746-747, 1948.
• Hopfield, J., J. Jenkins and J. van Allen, Distribution of Atmospheric Ozone, Presentation to the Symposium of Upper Atmosphere, Program of Am. Meteorol. Soc., St. Louis, Missouri, January 3-6, 1950.
• Van Allen, J., Rockets for Studying the Upper Atmosphere, Aero Digest, 61, pp. 20-23, September 1950.
• Van Allen, J., and J. Hopfield, Preliminary Report on Atmospheric Ozone Measurements from Rockets. Mèmoires de la Sociètè Royale des Sciences de Liège, Tome XII, Fasc. I-II, pp. 179-183, 1952.
• Van Allen, J., The Distribution of Atmospheric Ozone between 25- and 65-km Altitude. Phys. Rev., 88, 176, 1952.
• Van Allen, J., Direct Detection of Auroral Radiation with Rocket Equipment. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., 43, 57-62, 1957

Suomi, Verner E. (1915 - 1995)

Suomi was an American professor of atmospheric science and pioneer in imaging techniques used in weather satellites. He has been called the "father" of satellite meteorology. He learned the basics of meteorology early in WWII and later taught the subject to pilots. He received his Ph.D. in meteorology in 1953 from the University of Chicago. He was already at that point interested in climate, and in his dissertation studied the solar energy absorbed by a cornfield compared to the amount of energy radiated out to space by that field. This was his first foray into what would become his ongoing studies of the energy balance of the Earth and the atmosphere.

Suomi spent most of his career and the University of Wisconsin in Madison (UWM). There he held the Harry Wexler professorship in meteorology. He was the director of the Meteorological Department from 1950 to 1952 and again from 1954 to 1957. Suomi collaborated for many years with the electrical engineer Robert Parent, who was also at UWM. In the late 1950s the two men built a radiometer that could measure the Earth's radiation balance from space. This groundbreaking instrument would provide the first measurements of the difference between the solar radiation absorbed and the long wave radiation emitted by the Earth-atmosphere system. This difference, the net radiation, is important because it drives the circulation of the atmosphere. The incoming solar radiation had already been measured from the ground and from balloons, but only a satellite-based instrument could measure the net radiation and its variations over the globe in space and time. The Suomi-Parent flat-plate radiometer was aboard the science satellite Explorer-7 which was launched 13 October 1959. It provided the first measurement of the Earth's heat budget and its changes in space and time. Data from the radiometer combined with the other available radiative measurements proved that clouds and other atmospheric constituents could have a major effect on the net radiation. In particular, it was found that that clouds absorbed more solar energy and reflected less than had previously been estimated (the Earth was "darker" than originally believed).

This successful demonstration of the use of an artificial Earth satellite to study physical characteristics of the Earth-atmosphere system gave confidence to the scientific community that such satellites could be very useful in studies of Earth's weather. Explorer-7, with its Suomi-Parent flat-plate radiometer, can therefore be considered the precursor of all weather satellites. TIROS-1, the first dedicated weather satellite, was launched on 1 April 1960. An updated version of the radiometer was flown on many of the TIROS, ITOS and DMSP weather satellites.

Suomi served for one year, in 1964, as chief scientist of the U.S. Weather Bureau. Later, as a contractor to the Bureau, he studied the possible climatic effects of jet aircraft contrails. He also made significant contributions to the international meteorological community. For example, later in the 1960s, with Drs. Jules Charney, Joe Smagorinsky and Tom Malone he founded the Global Atmospheric Research Program (GARP). Beginning in 1968, Suomi served as president of the American Meteorological Society (AMS). He was awarded the Charles Franklin Brooks Award by the AMS in 1980. He was also awarded the International Meteorological Organization prize by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Suomi and Parent continued to collaborate and built more sophisticated instruments in the 1960s and 1970s. They designed a special camera, the spin-scan cloud camera, that could be used to photograph the Earth from rotating spin-stabilized satellites in geostationary orbit. The camera was first flown on the ATS-1 satellite (launched 7 December 1966). The camera was designed to take "high resolution photos of the Earth" (ATS-1_cover) and to "give weathermen their first large-scale observation of weather masses" (ATS-1_cover4). The camera was next flown on the ATS-3 satellite (launched 6 November 1967), from which it provided the first colour image of the Earth from space ("it will take color photos of the western hemisphere's weather" (ATS-3_cover) ) and the first photos of the full disk of the Earth ("First full-disk photos of Earth; sunrise & sunset cloud color changes" (ATS-3_cover3) ). Here is an example of a colour full disk photograph of Earth taken from ATS-3. The spin-scan camera came to be known as the VISSR (Visible and Infrared Spin Scan Radiometer) and was used in many later weather satellites. A modified version known as the VAS (VISSR Atmospheric Sounder) was the first instrument to allow the measurement of the vertical distribution of temperature and water vapour in the atmosphere. It was first carried by GOES-4 (launched 9 September 1980) and immediately proved its usefulness. Through the VAS, GOES-4 was "the first U.S. satellite capable of near continuous monitoring of atmospheric water vapor and temperatures" (GOES-4_cover).

Suomi and Parent's spin-scan camera was also modified for use in spacecraft that took early photos of Venus (Pioneer-12 and 13) and Jupiter and Saturn (Pioneer-10 and 11).

Suomi also led the team that developed McIDAS (Man-Computer Interactive Data Access System), one of the first integrated software packages designed to display and manipulate meteorological data. It was used for many years in the U.S. and some other countries as a primary tool for both weather research and operational forecasting.

Suomi also designed a radio altimeter designed to be carried aboard weather balloons to measure their height. He did basic work on the design of microwave antennas for use with atmospheric sounders such as the VAS. Later in his life he was involved in developing a sea surface sonde: an instrument that would measure the flow of heat from the ocean to the atmosphere. Such information is important in climate studies and as "ground truth" for meteorological satellites.

Parent (at left) Suomi (at right)

Parent, Robert (1917 - 1978)

Parent was an American professor of electrical engineering at the University of Wisconsin (Madison). He collaborated for many years on satellite-based meteorological instrumentation with professor Verner Suomi, an eminent atmospheric scientist at the same institution.

In the late 1950s the two men built a radiometer that could measure the Earth's radiation balance from space. This groundbreaking instrument would provide the first measurements of the difference between the solar radiation absorbed and the long wave radiation emitted by the Earth-atmosphere system. This difference, the net radiation, is important because it drives the circulation of the atmosphere. The incoming solar radiation had already been measured from the ground and from balloons, but only a satellite-based instrument could measure the net radiation and its variations over the globe in space and time. The Suomi-Parent flat-plate radiometer was aboard the science satellite Explorer-7 which was launched 13 October 1959. It provided the first measurement of the Earth's heat budget and its changes in space and time. Data from the radiometer combined with the other available radiative measurements proved that clouds and other atmospheric constituents could have a major effect on the net radiation. In particular, it was found that that clouds absorbed more solar energy and reflected less than had previously been estimated (the Earth was "darker" than originally believed).

This successful demonstration of the use of an artificial Earth satellite to study physical characteristics of the Earth-atmosphere system gave confidence to the scientific community that such satellites could be very useful in studies of Earth's weather. Explorer-7, with its Suomi-Parent flat-plate radiometer, can therefore be considered the precursor of all weather satellites. TIROS-1, the first dedicated weather satellite, was launched on 1 April 1960. An updated version of the radiometer was flown on many of the TIROS, ITOS and DMSP weather satellites.

Suomi and Parent continued to collaborate and built more sophisticated instruments in the 1960s and 1970s. They designed a special camera, the spin-scan cloud camera, that could be used to photograph the Earth from rotating spin-stabilized satellites in geostationary orbit. The camera was first flown on the ATS-1 satellite (launched 7 December 1966). The camera was designed to take "high resolution photos of the Earth" (ATS-1_cover) and to "give weathermen their first large-scale observation of weather masses" (ATS-1_cover4). The camera was next flown on the ATS-3 satellite (launched 6 November 1967), from which it provided the first colour image of the Earth from space ("it will take color photos of the western hemisphere's weather" (ATS-3_cover) ) and the first photos of the full disk of the Earth ("First full-disk photos of Earth; sunrise & sunset cloud color changes" (ATS-3_cover3) ). Here is an example of a colour full disk photograph of Earth taken from ATS-3. The spin-scan camera came to be known as the VISSR (Visible and Infrared Spin Scan Radiometer) and was used in many later weather satellites. A modified version known as the VAS (VISSR Atmospheric Sounder) was the first instrument to allow the measurement of the vertical distribution of temperature and water vapour in the atmosphere. It was first carried by GOES-4 (launched 9 September 1980) and immediately proved its usefulness. Through the VAS, GOES-4 was "the first U.S. satellite capable of near continuous monitoring of atmospheric water vapor and temperatures" (GOES-4_cover).

Suomi and Parent's spin-scan camera was also modified for use in spacecraft that took early photos of Venus (Pioneer-12 and 13) and Jupiter and Saturn (Pioneer-10 and 11).

Rowland, F. Sherwood (1927 - present)

Rowland is an American physicist who has conducted research into ozone. In 1974 he and Mario J. Molina published a seminal article in Nature in which they discussed the threat posed to the ozone layer by chlorofluorocarbon gases (CFCs) and by the freons used in aerosol spray cans, refrigeration fluids and plastic foams. This followed the work of Paul J. Crutzen, who discovered in 1970 that nitrogen oxides can accelerate ozone destruction. The three received in 1995 the Nobel Prize in physics for their research on ozone. Rowland has continued to work on problems of atmospheric chemistry since his collaboration with Molina in the 1970s.

Crutzen, Paul J. (1933 - present)

Crutzen is a Dutch physicist who conducted upper atmospheric research in the 1960s. This led to a deep interest in the photochemistry of atmospheric ozone, and he became a world expert on the chemical interactions of trace gases and trace components in the atmosphere. In 1970 he discovered that nitrogen oxides can accelerate ozone destruction. Later, he helped develop a theory for the cause of rapid ozone loss in the Antarctic winter, and eventually was involved in international negotiations concerning the restriction of the use of CFCs. Crutzen was director of research at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, from 1977 through 1980, and in 1980 was appointed director of research at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. In 1995, Crutzen, Mario J. Molina and Sherwood F. Rowland were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for their research on ozone.

Berger, André (1942 - present)

Berger is a distinguished Belgian climatologist. Since 1989 he has been a professor of meteorology and climatology at the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium. He is the co-founder of the International Polar Foundation.

Berger's research interests are in the areas of paleoclimate, climate modelling, remote sensing, nuclear energy and the envioronment. He extended and updated the work of Milanković on the relationship between long term changes in astronomical parameters and climatic change and the Ice Ages. He recalculated the expected variations of these parameters over a period of more than a million years and showed how they affect the amount of solar energy received by the Earth and how they can be detected in proxy records of past climate, such as global sea level and ice volume. His research predicts that astronomical orbital effects will keep the Earth out of an Ice Age for another 30,000 years.

In his book Le Climat et La Terre, Berger presents his synthesis of the science of natural and man-made climatic variations.

Molina, Mario J. (1943 - present)

Molina is a Mexican-born physicist who shared with F. Sherwood Rowland and Paul J. Crutzen in 1995 the Nobel Prize in physics for their research on ozone. Molina and Rowland together published in 1974 a seminal article in Nature in which they discussed the threat posed to the ozone layer by chlorofluorocarbon gases (CFCs) and by the freons used in aerosol spray cans, refrigeration fluids and plastic foams. This followed the work of Crutzen, who discovered in 1970 that nitrogen oxides can accelerate ozone destruction. Molina continued to conduct research on ozone chemistry and the Antarctic ozone "hole" in the 1980s and 1990s. In particular, he demonstrated that chlorine atoms can combine with ozone to form chlorine oxide and oxygen: this simple equation describes the desctruction of ozone by chlorine.

More recently, Molina has led a team studying the effect of aerosols (and in particular sooty sulphurous coal smoke from China and India) on the storm track over the Pacific. His team has used satellite data to analyze deep Pacific storms following wind-blown bursts of pollution. They determined that the aerosols have a climatologically-significant effect, and found increased storm activity that they ascribe to the aerosols.

Jinghe, Zhou (19?? - present?)

Jinghe was the chief of the Yiyang Weather Bureau in China in and around 2006.

Footnotes common to all of the tables above:

^*Scott catalog number, unless prefixed with Mi or BL for Michel; KM = Krause and Mishler coin catalog number; P = Pick banknote catalog number; Y = Yoeman coin catalog number.

^**FDC = first day cover; SS# = souvenir sheet, MS# = miniature sheet, where # = number of stamps in sheet, and the numbers in parentheses are the catalog numbers of the stamps in the sheet.

^***The tables include either explicit or implicit birth and death anniversaries if they are indicated by the postal item. In the "Notes on Content" column:

• An explicit anniversary (not in parentheses) is included for a postal item that specifically indicates either the anniversary in question (e.g. "200th anniversary of birth") or the first and last years that determine the anniversary span (e.g. "1804 - 2004").
• An implicit anniversary is presented in parentheses if the year of issue for the postal item is a mulltiple of 100, or 50, or 25 of the number of years from the person's birth or death. The birth and death years may or may not appear on the stamp itself. For example, a stamp issued in 2007 commemorating a person who lived from 1840 to 1907 will be noted by the implicit anniversary phrase "(100th anniv. death)" in the absence of any explicit anniversary mention.

Back to Meteorologist Index.
Back to Climatologists.
Back to Weather and Climate Philately.