Meteorologists

A scientist, meteorologist, mathematician, and biologist, Gregor Mendel is considered the founder of the modern science of genetics. He conducted a series of experiments on pea plants between 1856 and 1863, establishing many rules of heredity. Besides his work on pea plants, he also described novel plant species and conducted experiments with hawkweed and honeybees.

In the early 1900s, meteorologist Alfred Wegener did not find too many takers for his theory that all the continents of the world had initially been a single mass named Pangaea and that continental drift had caused them to split apart. Wegener died on his fourth expedition in Greenland.

Renowned meteorologist and aeronaut James Glaisher was a pioneer of balloon flights and had penned the iconic book Travels in the Air. He had also contributed to the formation of the Meteorological Society and the Aeronautical Society of Britain. The 2019 movie The Aeronauts depicts his exploits as a balloonist.

US extreme meteorologist and storm chaser Reed Timmer soared to fame with his Discovery Channel show Storm Chasers. He is also popular on Facebook and YouTube, where he posts videos of tornadoes, hurricanes, and cyclones. He has previously worked for AccuWeather and KFOR-TV.

US meteorologist and mathematician Edward Norton Lorenz is remembered for proposing concepts such as the chaos theory/deterministic chaos and the butterfly effect. He also laid down the Lorenz 96 model. The Kyoto Prize winner was associated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology throughout his research career.

Japanese-American meteorologist Tetsuya Theodore Fujita, also known as Ted Fujita, is remembered for his research on severe weather. He devised the Fujita Scale, or F-Scale, for measuring the intensity of tornadoes. In his later life, he was associated with the faculty of the University of Chicago.

English weather forecaster Piers Corbyn, who owned the weather-monitoring business WeatherAction, became quite infamous for his conspiracy theories regarding COVID-19. The brother of former Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn, he is a prominent anti-vaxxer and was once fined for calling NHS workers in London “murderers.”

British meteorologist Helen Willetts has been a known face on various BBC channels, such as BBC World News, BBC Radio 4, and BBC Radio 2. Considered one of the sexiest presenters on TV by the media, this TRIC Award-winning weather presenter has also played badminton for Wales internationally.

Starting his career with NASA as a research meteorologist, Piers Sellers later became a NASA astronaut. The British-American astronaut and climate scientist was a Space Shuttle mission expert and had visited the International Space Station thrice. He also appeared in the documentary Before the Flood, partially produced by Leonardo DiCaprio.

US meteorologist Owen Daniels is also a former American football player. A tight-end, he has been a Super Bowl champion with the Denver Broncos. He has also represented the Houston Texans and the Baltimore Ravens. He is now mostly seen on TV, discussing the impact of weather conditions on American football.

Nobel Prize-winning Dutch atmospheric chemist Paul J. Crutzen had initially been a civil engineer and a computer programmer. He is remembered for his contribution to research on the ozone layer. In 2000, he used the term Anthropocene to describe the current era where human action has been changing the planet.

Popularly known as Snowflake Bentley, US meteorologist and photographer Wilson Bentley had taken the world’s first detailed photographs of snowflakes and had thus pioneered snowflake photomicrography. He thus laid the foundation of the study of atmospheric ice crystal formation. Hailing from a farming family, he spent his entire life on his farm.

Scottish physicist, meteorologist and Nobel Laureate Charles Thomson Rees Wilson is noted for inventing the cloud chamber particle detector, also referred to as Wilson cloud chamber, used for visualizing the passage of ionizing radiation. It played a significant role in the area of experimental particle physics between the 1920s and 1950s.

British physicist, meteorologist, mathematician, psychologist and pacifist Lewis Fry Richardson was the first to apply modern mathematical techniques of weather forecasting to predict weather accurately. He also pioneered the use of similar methods in studying reasons of wars and the way to stop them. He proposed the iterative method called modified Richardson iteration for solving a system of linear equations.

William Morris Davis was an American geologist, geographer, meteorologist, and geomorphologist. Often referred to as the father of American geography, Davis is credited with founding the Association of American Geographers. He is also remembered for his association with the Geological Society of America, where he served as the president. In 1919, he was awarded the Royal Geographical Society's Gold Medal.

Nobel Prize-winning Japanese-origin American meteorologist Syukuro Manabe is a pioneering figure in the use of computers to stimulate climate change. He also conducted research on the prediction of global warming. He has been associated with the faculty of both the Princeton and Nagoya universities. He also received the Japanese Order of Culture.

Spanish mariner Antonio de Ulloa was sent by the government to explore America and ended up being captured by the British while returning. His scientific zeal made him a Fellow of the Royal Society there. He is remembered for his metallurgical, astronomical, and geographical discoveries and treatises.

Vilhelm Bjerknes was a Norwegian meteorologist and physicist who is counted among the pioneers of the present-day practice of weather forecasting. The primitive equations, which are used today in numerical climate modeling and weather prediction, were formulated by him. Vilhelm Bjerknes also developed the Bergen School of Meteorology, which played a major role in advancing meteorology in the early-20th century.

A pioneer in astronomical spectroscopy, Italian Jesuit priest and astronomer Angelo Secchi was among the first scientists who authoritatively stated that the Sun is a star. Notable contributions of Secchi, who served as director of the observatory at the Roman College for nearly three decades, includes discovering three comets and solar spicules; and inventing Secchi disk, heliospectrograph and telespectroscope.

Though mostly self-taught, William Ferrel grew up to be a school teacher and later joined the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac. He was later part of the U.S. Army’s Signal Service and is best remembered for his meteorological research and his explanation of the deflection of air currents on Earth.

US physicist and meteorologist Thomas Corwin Mendenhall is remembered for pioneering the use of the ring pendulum for the measurement of absolute gravity. He taught at the Ohio State University, the US Signal Corps, and the Tokyo Imperial University. He also developed the weather service of Ohio.

TV3 weather presenter Tomàs Molina is a renowned meteorologist who heads Televisión de Cataluña’s meteorology department and is also associated with the Catalan channels Canal Méteo and Teletiempo. The IABM vice president has authored several books and won the Spain Zapping Award for the Best TV Personality in 2012.

Chinese mathematician, meteorologist, and writer Qin Jiushao is remembered for developing a method to solve simultaneous linear equations and polynomial equations, mentioned in detail in his only book, Shushu jiuzhang. Though he became the Qiongzhou governor, he was later dismissed for corruption. He had also initially served the army.

US meteorologist Cleveland Abbe, who proposed the use of time zones, was also known for his contribution to the development of the US Weather Bureau, or the National Weather Service, through his daily weather maps and forecasts. Initially an astronomer, he also served as the director of the Cincinnati (Ohio) Observatory.

Jacob Bjerknes was a Norwegian American meteorologist known for his works on the dynamics of the polar front and the mechanism for north-south heat transport. He was the son of meteorologist Vilhelm Bjerknes. Jacob Bjerknes began his career working under his father and later pursued an academic career. He was a recipient of the Royal Meteorological Society’s Symons Gold Medal. 

Though he was initially educated in law, George Hadley gained fame as a physicist and meteorologist. He is remembered for his extensive research on trade-wind currents and for devising a theory describing trade winds and the north-south circulation pattern, which is now known as the Hadley cell.

US meteorologist Jule Gregory Charney is remembered for his pioneering work on modern dynamical meteorology. He developed numerical weather prediction. Starting as a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he later headed the meteorology department at the same institute. His work won him honors such as the Hodgkins Medal.

Apart from being a geologist and physicist, Horace Bénédict de Saussure was also a skilled mountaineer and Alpine explorer. Initially a professor of philosophy and physics, he later became one of the earliest user of the word geology. Of his many inventions, the most prominent was his version of the hygrometer.

Harald Sverdrup was a Norwegian oceanographer and meteorologist who served as president of the International Association of Physical Oceanography. He was also director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He was the author of many books, including his magnum opus The Oceans: Their Physics, Chemistry, and General Biology. He was a recipient of the William Bowie Medal. 

US chemist and meteorologist Vincent Schaefer is remembered for his pioneering studies on the physics of precipitation. He developed cloud seeding, a weather modification system, using dry ice pellets. He taught at the State University of New York and was later named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Carl-Gustaf Rossby was a Swedish-born American meteorologist. He played an important role during the Second World War, organizing the training of military meteorologists. Over the course of his career, Carl-Gustaf Rossby was honored with many prestigious awards such as the Applied Meteorology Award from the American Meteorological Society in 1959.

Copley Medal-winning geologist and meteorologist Jean-André Deluc had initially studied math and natural sciences, before embarking on business tours across Europe. In course of time, he gathered a huge collection of fossils and minerals. His research areas included the mercury barometer. He was later named a fellow of the Royal Society.

Scottish meteorologist and geophysicist Balfour Stewart is best remembered for his research on radiant energy and terrestrial magnetism. Initially a trader, he later joined the Kew Observatory as an assistant and eventually became its director. The Unseen Universe remains one of his best-known written works.

Sir William Napier Shaw, better known as Napier Shaw, was a British meteorologist who devised the tephigram and the millibar. Apart from teaching physics at the University of Cambridge, he also headed the Royal Meteorological Society and the International Meteorological Committee. He also penned notable works such as Manual of Meteorology.

British meteorologist and physicist John Aitken is best remembered for his research on the microscopic particles now known as the Aitken nuclei and their role in the condensation of water vapor. However, health issues kept him confined to his home laboratory and prevented him from taking up significant positions.

Thomas Stewart Traill had donned many hats. Initially a practicing physician, he was also interested in zoology and helped John James Audubon publish The Birds of America. He was also a chemist and a meteorologist and spent his life teaching at the University of Edinburgh. He also edited Encyclopædia Britannica’s 8th edition.

US meteorologist James Pollard Espy developed the first known theory to explain the thermodynamics of cloud formation. He also made pioneering use of the telegraph to collect meteorological observations. He also served as a meteorologist for US War and Navy and penned the iconic book The Philosophy of Storms.

Sverre Petterssen was a Norwegian meteorologist. He was well known for his work in the field of weather analysis and forecasting. He was a member of the Bergen School of Meteorology and worked as a weather officer in the Norwegian Air Force for many years. He served as a weather forecaster for bombing raids during World War II.