Meteorology's Struggle for Professional Recognition in the USA (1900–1950)

Summary

Meteorology, a scientific discipline almost exclusively associated with weather forecasting in the first half of the twentieth century in the USA, was viewed with disdain by more mathematically based scientific communities. A descriptive science lacking in physical and mathematical rigor, meteorology was typically without an academic home in US colleges and universities. This stood in sharp contrast to the meteorological communities across the Atlantic which were supported by dedicated geophysical institutes. Four factors kept US meteorologists, unlike their European colleagues, on the fringes of the scientific mainstream: a lack of ‘rigor’, a lack of academic presence, a lack of patronage (governmental or private), and a pervasive public view that meteorological information was ‘free’ and yet should be tailored to a variety of users. The symbiotic relationship of these factors created an almost insurmountable hurdle to disciplinary advancement. That hurdle was effectively overcome in mid-century when the military demands of the Second World War presented meteorology with the opportunity to leave behind its legacy as a ‘guessing science’ and assume its place as a mathematically and physically based theoretical scientific discipline.

Acknowledgments

The author acknowledges the support of the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, where most of this manuscript was written, and the American Meteorological Society, which funded the original research. Special thanks to the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments, and to David Cahan and Ronald E. Doel for valuable feedback provided on earlier drafts.

Notes

¹On the growth of US research universities, see for instance Laurence R. Veysey, The Emergence of the American Research University (Chicago, IL, 1965); Hugh Hawkins, Pioneer: A History of the Johns Hopkins University, 1874–1889 (Baltimore, MD, 1960); and Roger L. Geiger, To Advance Knowledge: The Growth of American Research Universities (New York, 1986). See also Robert E. Kohler, Partners in Science: Foundations and Natural Scientists, 1900–1945 (Chicago, IL, 1992), chapters 1–2. On academic geography, see David Livingstone, The Geographical Tradition: Episodes in the History of a Contested Enterprise (Cambridge, 1992).

²See James Rodger Fleming, Meteorology in America, 1800–1870 (Baltimore, MD, 1990) for a detailed account of the early days of meteorology in the United States, including a discussion of theoretical disputes of the period, the Smithsonian's Meteorological Project, cooperative observation networks, and the impact of weather telegraphy. Gisela Kutzbach, The Thermal Theory of Cyclones: A History of Meteorological Thought in the Nineteenth Century (Boston, MA, 1979) focuses on the development of early meteorological theory up until the 1920s.

³The USA did not have a strong theoretical research component in any scientific discipline in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, a situation John Servos attributes to a lack of mathematical training. See John W. Servos, ‘Mathematics and the Physical Sciences in America, 1880–1930’, Isis, 77 (1986), 611–29 (612, 618). However, graduate programmes centred on experimental sciences were increasingly robust. See Robert E. Kohler, ‘The Ph.D. Machine: Building on the Collegiate Base’, Isis, 81 (1990), 638–62 (642). See also Daniel J. Kevles, Jeffrey L. Sturchio, and P. Thomas Carroll, ‘The Sciences in America, Circa 1880’, Science, 209 (4 July 1980), 26–32.

⁴Vilhelm Bjerknes, ‘Weather Forecasting as a Problem in Mechanics and Physics’, Meteorologische Zeitschrift, 21 (1904), 1–17.

⁵Robert Marc Friedman, Appropriating the Weather: Vilhelm Bjerknes and the Construction of a Modern Meteorology (Ithaca, NY and London, 1989), 31–48. Friedman's book presents a thorough discussion of the founding of the Bergen School of Meteorology and its methodologies.

⁶Kutzbach (note 2), 224–25, 234–35, 239–40.

⁷US Weather Bureau, Report of the Chief, 1932–1933 (Washington, DC, 1932), 7; C. F. Marvin, ‘Committee on Research’, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 3 (1922): 11; Gustavus A. Weber, The Weather Bureau: Its History, Activities and Organization (New York and London, 1922), 28, 32, 35; US Weather Bureau, Report of the Chief, 1921–1922 (Washington, DC, 1923), 22, 29; US Weather Bureau, Report of the Chief, 1924–1925 (Washington, DC, 1926), 8.

⁸Weber (note 7), 19, 34, 35.

⁹Friedman (note 5), 119–22.

¹⁰For a discussion of the early years of instrument development, see John H. Conover, The Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory: The First 100 Years—1885–1995 (Boston, MA, 1990).

¹¹Sir Napier Shaw, ‘The Outlook of Meteorological Science’, Monthly Weather Review, 48 (1920), 34–37.

¹²Edgar W. Woolard, ‘Recent Contributions to Mathematical Meteorology’, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 3 (1922), 96–98.

¹³Quoted in William A. Koelsch, ‘From Geo- to Physical Science: Meteorology and the American University, 1919–1945’, in Historical Essays on Meteorology 1919–1995: The Diamond Anniversary History Volume of the American Meteorological Society, ed. James Rodger Fleming (Boston, MA, 1996), 522. Koelsch's article addresses the ways in which meteorology as a scientific discipline was handled by institutions of higher education in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s until it became recognized as a university discipline in its own right during the 1940s.

¹⁴Sir Napier Shaw, Manual of Meteorology, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1926), 9.

¹⁵Robert DeC. Ward, ‘How Meteorological Instruction May Be Furthered’, Monthly Weather Review, 46 (1918), 554.

¹⁶Robert DeC. Ward, ‘How Meteorological Instruction May Be Furthered’, Monthly Weather Review, 46 (1918), 554. For contemporary assessments of the state of academic meteorology in the early twentieth century, see Frank Waldo, ‘The Study of Meteorology’, Education, 26 (1906), 149–53; Cleveland Abbe, ‘The Progress of Science as Illustrated by the Development of Meteorology’, Annual Report (Washington, DC, 1907), 287–309; ‘Curiosities of Science and Invention: Meteorology in American Universities’, Scientific American, CV (14 October 1911), 343; and William G. Reed, ‘Meteorological Observations at the University of California’, Science, XXXVII (1913), 800–802.

¹⁷Koelsch (note 13), 513–19.

¹⁸Paul P. Abrahams, ‘Academic Geography in America: An Overview’, Reviews in American History, 3 (March 1975), 46–52 (48).

¹⁹Ronald E. Doel, ‘The Earth Sciences and Geophysics’, in Science in the 20th Century, ed. John Krige and Dominique Pestre (Amsterdam, 1997), 391–416 (400). See also Gregory A. Good, ‘The Rockefeller Foundation, the Leipzig Geophysical Institute, and National Socialism in the 1930s’, Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, 21 (1991), 299–316.

²⁰While a disciplinary history of meteorology is lacking, historians of science have explored the disciplinary histories of the physical sciences. For a discussion of academic programmes in astronomy and how they compared with those for chemistry and biology, see John Lankford, American Astronomy: Community, Careers, and Power, 1859–1940 (Chicago, IL, 1997), 371–82. For a discussion on academic programmes in physics, see Daniel Kevles, The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America (Cambridge, MA and London, 1987), 61–63, 70–72, 77. On biology, see Philip Pauly, Biologists and the Promise of American Life: From Meriweather Lewis to Alfred Kinsey (Princeton, NJ, 2000).

²¹‘Notes of Interest to Teachers’, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 1 (1920), 89–91.

²²Donald R. Whitnah, A History of the United States Weather Bureau (Urbana, IL, 1965), 69.

²³See Abrahams (note 18), for more details on the development of research and instruction in geography.

²⁴‘University News’, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 3 (1922), 157.

²⁵Woodrow C. Jacobs, ‘A Survey of Instruction’ (Master's thesis, University of Southern California, 1934), 32, 39, 50, 95.

²⁶Lankford (note 20), 362. There were 362 professional astronomers in 1940.

²⁷Kevles (note 20), 202.

²⁸Willis Ray Gregg, ‘History of the Application of Meteorology to Aeronautics with Special Reference to the United States’, Monthly Weather Review, 61 (1933), 165.

²⁹Charles F. Brooks, ‘Reclassification’, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 3 (1922), 164.

³⁰James Rodger Fleming, ‘Meteorological Observing Systems Before 1870 in England, France, Germany, Russia and the USA: A Review and Comparison’, World Meteorological Society Bulletin, 46 (1997): 249–58, on 254.

³¹Shaw (note 14), 2.

³²Gustavus A. Weber, The Bureau of Chemistry and Soils: Its History, Activities and Organization (Baltimore, MD, 1928), appendices 1, 2, and 6; Milton Conover, The Office of Experiment Stations: Its History, Activities and Organization (Baltimore, MD, 1924), appendices 1, 2, and 6.

³³‘Meteorology in American Universities’, Scientific American, CV (14 October 1911), 343.

³⁴‘Proceedings of the First Meeting’, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 2 (1921), 13. This decline in the Weather Bureau's posture in the face of foreign expansion was used in support of an American Meteorological Society resolution encouraging Congress to increase the Bureau's appropriations.

³⁵‘Some Weather Bureau Projects’, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 1 (1920), 11–12. The request included $200,000 for aerological work, $50,000 for marine meteorology, and $15,000 for fire-weather forecasting.

³⁶US Weather Bureau, Report of the Chief of the Weather Bureau, 1919–1920 (Washington, DC, 1921).

³⁷Efficiency of the Weather Bureau Endangered’, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 1 (1920), 140.

³⁸Brooks (note 29), 163–64. $1800/year was less than most shop employees earned at the Bureau of Standards or clerks earned with the Department of Agriculture's Office of Experiment Stations.

³⁹Weber (note 7), 49, 70; M. Conover (note 32), 128, 166; Weber (note 32), 165, 188.

⁴⁰‘Increased Pay for Weather Bureau Employees’, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 9 (1928), 120.

⁴¹S. D. F., ‘Retrenchment in Weather Bureau Activities’, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 15 (1934), 29–30; US Weather Bureau, 1932–1933 (note 7), 3. A first-order station took extensive observations hourly or with continuous recording devices.

⁴²Karl T. Compton, ‘Report of the Science Advisory Board, July 31, 1933 to September 1, 1934’ (Washington, DC, 20 September 1934).

⁴³See Robert E. Kohler, ‘Science, Foundations, and American Universities in the 1920s’, Osiris, 2nd series, 3 (1987), 135–64, for a discussion of philanthropic support of US academic science between the world wars.

⁴⁴Oliver L. Fassig, ‘The Weather Bureau’, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 14 (1933), 111–12.

⁴⁵This was also true in the UK. See Shaw (note 14), 9. While other governmental agencies also provided ‘free’ services related to agriculture, the public view that anyone could forecast the weather led them to diminish the value of Weather Bureau services even as they expected those same services.

⁴⁶Congressional Act of 1 October 1890 (26 Statutes at Large, 653).

⁴⁷US Weather Bureau, 1932–1933 (note 7), 1.

⁴⁸US Weather Bureau, Report of the Chief of the Weather Bureau, 1920–1921 (Washington, DC, 1922), 19; US Weather Bureau, 1921–1922 (note 7), 14–15, 17; US Weather Bureau, Report of the Chief of the Weather Bureau, 1923–1924 (Washington, DC, 1925), 8; US Weather Bureau, Report of the Chief of the Weather Bureau, 1925–1926 (Washington, DC, 1927), 4. See Stephen J. Pyne, Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire (Princeton, NJ, 1982), 314–17 for background on fire issues, a discussion of fire weather forecasting as provided by the Weather Bureau, and the coordination that took place with the US Forest Service.

⁴⁹Weber (note 7), 70.

⁵⁰US Weather Bureau, 1920–1921 (note 48), 11.

⁵¹Harold Yost, ‘Adjusting Rain Insurance Policies’, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 5 (1924), 17–19.

⁵²US Weather Bureau, 1922–1923 (Washington, DC, 1924), 17; ‘Insurance Against Adverse Weather’, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 2 (1921), 13, reprinted from the Birmingham (Alabama) News, 12 August 1921; A. H. Palmer, ‘Weather Insurance’, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 3 (1922), 67–70.

⁵³Weber (note 7), 35.

⁵⁴For more on aviation during the First World War, see Bill Robie, For the Greatest Achievement: A History of the Aero Club of America and the National Aeronautic Association (Washington, DC, 1993), 79–92. For background on aviation during the early part of the twentieth century, see two books by Richard P. Hallion: Legacy of Flight: The Guggenheim Contribution to American Aviation (Seattle, WA and London, 1977) and Taking Flight: Inventing the Aerial Age from Antiquity Through the First World War (New York, 2003). For a brief discussion of aeronautical meteorology, see Gordon D. Cartwright and Charles H. Sprinkle, ‘A History of Aeronautical Meteorology: Personal Perspectives, 1903–1995’, in Historical Essays on Meteorology 1919–1995; The Diamond Anniversary History Volume of the American Meteorological Society, ed. James Rodger Fleming (Boston, MA, 1996), 443–80.

⁵⁵US Weather Bureau, 1920–1921 (note 48), 10.

⁵⁶US Weather Bureau, 1932–1933 (note 7), 5.

⁵⁷Philip Maynard Flammer, ‘Meteorology in the United States Army, 1917–1935’ (Master's thesis, George Washington University, 1938), 14.

⁵⁸Philip Maynard Flammer, ‘Meteorology in the United States Army, 1917–1935’ (Master's thesis, George Washington University, 1938), 11–15.

⁵⁹Charles C. Bates and John F. Fuller, America's Weather Warriors, 1814–1985 (College Station, TX, 1986), 18.

⁶⁰Kevles (note 20), 118–19, 132–33, 138.

⁶¹Flammer (note 57), 18.

⁶²For details on Millikan's wartime work, see Robert A. Millikan, ‘Some Scientific Aspects of the Meteorological Work of the United States Army’, in The New World of Science, edited by Robert M. Yerkes (New York, 1920), 49–62.

⁶³Frederick J. Nelson, ‘The History of Aërology in the Navy’, US Naval Institute Proceedings 60 (1934), 522–28 (523). See also Bates and Fuller (note 59), 23–29; and J. Conover (note 10), 144–49.

⁶⁴Cartwright and Sprinkle (note 54), 446–47. For more details on the relationship between the US military services and meteorology, see Bates and Fuller (note 59).

⁶⁵Nelson (note 63), 525; Bates and Fuller (note 59), 37–38.

⁶⁶Horace R. Byers, ‘Carl-Gustaf Arvid Rossby’, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 38 (1958), 98–99.

⁶⁷F. W. Reichelderfer, ‘Postgraduate Course in Aerology and Meteorology for Naval Officers’, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 9 (1928), 149.

⁶⁸Hallion (note 54), 219.

⁶⁹Reichelderfer (note 67), 149.

⁷⁰Robert G. Stone, ‘New Department of Meteorol ogy at New York University’, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 19 (1938), 456; J. Edmund Woodman, ‘The New York University Institute of Aeronautical Meteorology—Its Structure and Problems’, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 17 (1936), 118–19. J. M. Lewis, ‘Cal Tech's Program in Meteorology: 1933–1948’, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 75 (1994), 69–81.

⁷¹On Haurwitz, see Julius London, ‘Bernhard Haurwitz’, Biographical Memoirs, 69 (Washington, DC, 1996), 86–113; on German seismologist Beno Gutenberg, who used his studies of microseism to help forecast tropical cyclones during the Second World War, see Leon Knopoff, ‘Beno Gutenberg’, Biographical Memoirs, 76 (1998), 114–47; and on Jacob Bjerknes, see Arnt Eliassen, ‘Jacob Aall Bonnevie Bjerknes’, Biographical Memoirs, 68 (1996), 2–21. For the impact of European émigrés on US science, see Laura Fermi, Illustrious Immigrants: The Intellectual Migration from Europe, 1930/41, 2nd ed. (Chicago, IL, 1971); Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn, editors, The Intellectual Migration: Europe and America, 1930–1960 (Cambridge, 1969); and Jarrel C. Jackman and Carla M. Borden, editors, The Muses Flee Hitler: Cultural Transfer and Adaptation, 1930–1945 (Washington, DC, 1983).

⁷²See, for example, Kohler (note 43).

⁷³Louis H. Bean, ‘Weather and Crop Research under Bankhead-Jones Fund: Progress Report’, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 17 (1936), 288–292. For more information on the Bankhead-Jones Act of 1935, see A. Hunter Dupree, Science in the Federal Government: A History of Policies and Activities (Baltimore, MD and London, 1986), 364–65.

⁷⁴Bates and Fuller (note 59), 52.

⁷⁵Koelsch (note 13), 530–31.

⁷⁶See Frederik Nebeker, Calculating the Weather: Meteorology in the 20th Century (San Diego, CA, 1995), 111–48, for a discussion of the effect of the Second World War on meteorological practice and von Neumann's computer project as it related to numerical weather prediction. See also William Aspray, John von Neumann and the Origins of Modern Computing (Cambridge, MA, 1990), chapter 6. For a discussion of the effects of war on meteorological development, see Alex Roland, ‘Science and War’, Osiris, 2nd series, 1 (1985), 247–72. For a detailed look at the development of numerical weather prediction in the United States, see Kristine C. Harper, ‘Boundaries of Research: Civilian Leadership, Military Funding, and the International Network Surrounding the Development of Numerical Weather Prediction in the United States’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Oregon State University, 2003).

⁷⁷Horace R. Byers, ‘Recollections of the War Years’, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 51 (1970), 217.

⁷⁸UMC Meeting Minutes, 6 December 1943, 25–27, 40, 46–48, 58 (University Meteorological Committee Collection, MC 511, Institute Archives and Special Collections, MIT Libraries, Cambridge, MA, Box 2, Blue Folder).

⁷⁹Carl-Gustav Rossby, ‘A Message to Members from President Rossby’, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 25 (1944), 268–69.

⁸⁰Kristine C. Harper, ‘Research from the Boundary Layer: Civilian Leadership, Military Funding and the Development of Numerical Weather Prediction (1946–1955)’, Social Studies of Science, 33 (2003), 667–96 (670–71).

⁸¹Whitnah (note 22), 195. Other books addressing the history of the Weather Bureau and its predecessors are Phyllis Smith, Weather Pioneers: The Signal Corps Station at Pikes Peak (Athens, OH, 1993); and Patrick Hughes, A Century of Weather Service: A History of the Birth and Growth of the National Weather Service, 1870–1970 (New York and London, 1970).

⁸²Harper (note 80), 684–85.