Meteorology is a branch of the atmospheric sciences with a major focus on weather forecasting. The study of meteorology dates back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did not begin until the 18th century. The 19th century saw modest progress in the field after weather observation networks were formed across broad regions. Prior attempts at prediction of weather depended on historical data. It was not until after the elucidation of the laws of physics, and more particularly in the latter half of the 20th century, the development of the computer that significant breakthroughs in weather forecasting were achieved. An important branch of weather forecasting is marine weather forecasting as it relates to maritime and coastal safety, in which weather effects also include atmospheric interactions with large bodies of water.
Sydney Chapman was a British mathematician and geophysicist. His work on the kinetic theory of gases, solar-terrestrial physics, and the Earth's ozone layer has inspired a broad range of research over many decades.
Professor Sir Brian John Hoskins, CBE FRS, is a British dynamical meteorologist and climatologist based at the Imperial College London and the University of Reading. A mathematician by training, his research has focused on understanding atmospheric motion from the scale of fronts to that of the Earth, using a range of theoretical and numerical models. He is perhaps best known for his work on the mathematical theory of extratropical cyclones and frontogenesis, particularly through the use of potential vorticity. He has also produced research across many areas of meteorology, including the Indian monsoon and global warming, recently contributing to the Stern review and the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.
Sir John Theodore Houghton was a Welsh atmospheric physicist who was the co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) scientific assessment working group which shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 with Al Gore. He was the lead editor of first three IPCC reports. He was professor in atmospheric physics at the University of Oxford, former Director General at the Met Office and founder of the Hadley Centre.
Sir William Napier Shaw was a British meteorologist. He introduced the tephigram, a diagram for evaluating convective instability in the atmosphere. He also served as president of the International Meteorological Committee and Royal Meteorological Society.
Sir Robert Lewis Fullarton Boyd was a pioneer of British space science and founding director of the Mullard Space Science Laboratory.
Sir John Anthony Carroll was a British astronomer and physicist. In the 1920s he worked at the Solar Physics Observatory, Cambridge, UK with F.J.M. Stratton and Richard van der Riet Woolley. He made major technological advances, inventing a high resolution spectrometer, and a coronal camera.
Helmut Erich Landsberg (1906–1985) was a noted and influential climatologist. He was born in Frankfurt, Germany, February 9, 1906 and died December 6, 1985 in Geneva, Switzerland while attending a meeting of the World Meteorological Organization. Landsberg was an important figure in meteorology and atmospheric science in education, public service and administration. He authored several notable works, particularly in the field of particulate matter and its influence on air pollution and human health. He is the first to write in English about the use of statistical analysis in the field of climatology and implemented such statistical analysis in aiding military operations during World War II. He received a number of significant honors during his life. Several honors are now bestowed in his name in recognition of his contributions to his field.
Gordon Miller Bourne Dobson was a British physicist and meteorologist who did important work on ozone.
William Piercy, 1st Baron Piercy CBE was a British economist, civil servant, businessman and financier. He is best remembered as chairman of the Industrial & Commercial Finance Corporation from 1945 to 1964.
Sir Samuel Crowe Curran, FRS, FRSE, was a physicist and the first Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Strathclyde – the first of the new technical universities in Britain. He is the inventor of the scintillation counter, the proportional counter, and the proximity fuze.
Professor Percival Albert "Peter" Sheppard CBE FRS was a Meteorologist at Imperial College, London from 1952 to 1974 and thereafter emeritus professor.
Louis Joseph Battan was an American atmospheric scientist who received his doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1953, where he was hired to work in the field of the physics of clouds and precipitation. In 1958 he was appointed professor of meteorology and associate director of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Arizona in Tucson. He was a pioneer in cloud physics and radar meteorology.
Hugh Ernest Butler FRSE MRIA FRAS was a pioneering Welsh-born astronomer. Wartime work included important contributions to anti-aircraft gunnery followed in peacetime by major contributions to galactic and extragalactic research particularly via ballistic rockets. He promoted the idea of an orbiting space telescope as early as 1958.
Alexander Crichton Mitchell FRSE, named in some sources as Arthur Crichton Mitchell, was a Scottish physicist with a special interest in geomagnetics who worked for many years in India as a professor and head of a meteorological observatory before returning to Scotland. He then worked with the Royal Navy to devise a system, known as an anti-submarine indicator loop, for detecting submarines by detecting currents induced in a loop of wire on the sea floor.
George Ian Scott CBE, FRSE, FRCSEd was a 20th-century Scottish ophthalmic surgeon who in 1954, became the first holder of the Forbes Chair of Ophthalmology at the University of Edinburgh. He specialised in neuro-ophthalmology, studies of the visual fields and diabetic retinopathy. He was President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh from 1964 to 1967, Surgeon-Oculist to the Queen in Scotland from 1965 and president of the Ophthalmological Society of the United Kingdom from 1970 to 1972.
Prof Donald Cecil Pack CBE FRSE FEIS FIMA (1920–2016) was a 20th-century British mathematician who worked on supersonic airflows. He was one of the persons responsible for Strathclyde University receiving its university status and was its Vice Principal 1968 to 1972. He was one of the first to study the science associated with the sound barrier. In 1964 he was a joint founder of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA).
John Stewart Marshall was a Canadian physicist and meteorologist. Researcher for the Canadian government during the Second World war and then professor at McGill University from 1945 until his retirement in 1979, he was renowned for his research in cloud physics and precipitation, but especially for being a pioneer of weather radar.
John Switzer Owens was an Irish physician and environmental engineer. He invented some of the first scientific instruments for collecting and measuring air pollution and helped to establish the first large-scale pollution monitoring network in the United Kingdom.
David Fowler,, is a British environmental physicist, recognized as an authority on atmospheric pollution. He specializes in micrometeorology, the land-atmosphere exchange of trace gases and particles, and the effects of pollutants on vegetation.
