Number 34, June 2002

Women in the Atmospheric Sciences

Astounding Progress since World War II
Personal Viewpoint of Joanne Simpson in 2002

Prior to World War II the handful of women working in atmospheric sciences were primarily two or three physicists involved in such problems as upper atmosphere radiation. Their positions were as assistants to men.

During World War II approximately 50 women got nine months of training in the so-called "A" Course, given at three U.S. universities to train Aviation Cadets to become military Weather Officers. I was one of the 20 or so that received this training at the University of Chicago, in the "Fourth War Course", which graduated in May 1943. This training enabled me to get a B.S. in Meteorology and have a start at a Masters degree. There were seven women in my class of 210 and we all finished in the top half. We were trained to teach Aviation Cadets, which I did both at N.Y.U. and the University of Chicago, assisting men in teaching dynamics and synoptic laboratory, mainly plotting and analyzing weather maps by hand, which were used to teach forecasting.

After the war we women were supposed to go back home, get behind the mop, and have babies, which nearly all the women did. A handful of us had become very interested in meteorology and wanted to continue to become professionals. Every possible obstacle was put in our way, ranging from refusal of scholarships to downright hostility from the wives as well as the men. When I talked to the famous Carl Rossby, the head of the Chicago Department, he said "No woman has ever obtained a Ph.D. in Meteorology, none ever will, and even if you did manage to get one, no one will give you a job." I became even more determined. I taught Physics to War Veterans at Illinois Tech, and took most of my graduate courses there free as a faculty member. Rossby went back to Sweden. In 1947, Herb Riehl, intrigued by my interest in his work in tropical meteorology, took me on as a Ph.D. student, and I finally got my Ph.D. in 1949, when my son David was three years old. Being a full-time student, teacher, and housewife, too, was quite a rat race and day care for David always a worry.

But the last of Rossby's imprecations was right-no one would give me a job in meteorology. I got my first foot in by means of a summer job. Even that was purely a matter of luck. My mother was dating a famous meteorologist, Dr. Bernhard Haurwitz, then a professor at MIT. He ran a project at Woods Hole, which involved analysis of the same tropical cloud observations that so fascinated me when Riehl taught about tropical clouds in his graduate course at Chicago. The aircraft measurements made inside and outside trade-wind cumulus enabled the famous oceanographer Henry Stommel to derive the first recognition and theory of cumulus entrainment. I took part of the data set back to Illinois Tech, where I had been promoted to Assistant Professor and had my first graduate student. He and I did some exciting work on clouds over heated islands and in 1951 I was finally offered a full-time job at Woods Hole. My then husband, who had a Ph.D. in physics, graciously accepted a job there building oceanographic instruments and working on the side on turbulence.

This story illustrates the problems faced by women trying to do meteorology at the time-nepotism rules at most organizations, difficulties in finding child care, and almost uniform male lack of confidence that women could or would stick to the job and produce anything, whether research or good forecasts. I heard the story nauseatingly often from men "Well, I hired a woman once and she left to have a baby, couldn't come up to scratch." Four female meteorologist friends of my generation showed real ability, published good research, and tried to make their way. Two got Ph.Ds, one of those couldn't find a job and became a traffic analyst. Two gave up, one with lifetime bitterness, the other apparently graciously accepted being a part-time research assistant all her life, where she was smarter than most of those she assisted. The second Ph.D. never married. Her career was restricted by not being allowed to go on field programs, but she published good research and was eventually a section head and served on the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Council.

I broke the barrier against women on field programs by dint of a wonderful man named Captain Max Eaton in the Office of Naval Research, who funded nearly all the research at Woods Hole. I had applied for a WWII amphibious aircraft to carry on the work of modeling and understanding tropical clouds. The Navy lent the aircraft to Woods Hole and it was being instrumented when I was told I could not go on the field program I had planned because Woods Hole never allowed women on its oceanographic vessels. When informed of this, Captain Max called the Director of Woods Hole and said " No Joanne, no airplane" and the fat was in the fire. We carried out three productive tropical programs in five years, learning more about entrainment, the tropical boundary layer, and building the first cumulus models. At Woods Hole, they had to start letting women oceanographers go on the ships, and so did most other institutions.

By the late 1960's and early 70s a few more women began to earn Ph.D.s. The Department of Meteorology at the University of Washington, in the person of Joost Businger, led the way by educating the two female superstars of the next generation, Peggy LeMone and Kristina Katsaros. In the mid-70s Peggy and I did a survey of women in professional positions in meteorology. There were 150 survivors who had Ph.D.s or equivalent. All, married or single, reported discrimination, difficulties in getting good jobs, and hurtful criticism, some severely wounding. The married women nearly all had to put their husbands' jobs first. Many survived by a mother or other relative providing childcare. We also found numerous women who had tried and given up, more than half because of child care problems, nearly all carrying hurts from hostility and criticism.

Peggy LeMone persuaded the AMS to start a Board on Women and Minorities, which she caringly chaired for many years. In addition to her brilliant boundary layer publications from serving as aircraft scientist on more than 20 important field programs, she acted as a one-woman crusader to encourage and comfort other women and to show them how wonderful a career in meteorology could be, if you could be tough and persistent enough to stand the difficulties.

From the 1970s onward the situation for women meteorologists has improved so much nearly everywhere that I am personally convinced they have as good opportunities as men do. Most nepotism rules have fallen. Many universities make a position for a qualified spouse, male or female. Many honor societies are trying so hard for diversity that women and minorities have a slight advantage.

When I came to NASA in 1979, for the first time I was working in such an enlightened environment that we had enough women to talk science in the ladies room. Since then it has only improved. When the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite was launched in Japan in 1997, on the U. S. team, the lead scientist and lead engineer were both women (myself and Abby Harper) and on the Japanese team, a leader in their data system was a woman (Rico Oki)!

Next year more than half the employees of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center will be women and minorities. The rosters of most graduate Atmospheric Science departments now are between 25 and 60 per cent female. I only hope that our economy will have jobs for them. But in any case, we can be assured that the women will have at least an equal chance to get what jobs there are.

Joanne Simpson
nasajoanne@att.net