Byers, Horace, 1987-08-03

Oral history interview with Horace Byers, 1987. Interviewed by Earl Droessler : AMS 66; no tapes. Forms part of American Meteorological Society Oral History Project and UCAR/NCAR Oral History Collection. Horace R. Byers describes his undergraduate career and subsequent position as meteorological observer for the U. S. Weather Bureau (1925) at the University of California at Berkeley. He discusses the El Nino phenomenon as it was understood in the 1920s, and comments on later discoveries. He talks about his work as assistant to Carl-Gustaf Rossby in California for the Daniel Guggenheim Fund, commenting on the state of American meteorology in the 1920s. He describes the advent of university meteorology departments at Caltech, MIT, and the University of Chicago, including his own graduate work at MIT under Rossby and Hurd Willett. He reviews theoretical developments in meteorology in the 1930s as well as reflecting on his own work in cloud physics; Rossby's work on turbulence and rotating tank experiments with Dave Fultz; formation of the Milliken Committee to overhaul the Weather Bureau in the 1930s. He details the creation of the wartime university meteorological programs (Caltech, UCLA, MIT, NYU, and Chicago), which turned out highly trained military personnel and spurred postwar development of the science. He discusses the Thunderstorm Project, and subsequent activity in weather modification in the United States.