a family tree of tropical meteorology’s academic community...

A FAMILY TREE OF TROPICAL METEOROLOGYrsquoS ACADEMIC COMMUNITY AND ITS PROPOSED EXPANSION by RobeRt e HaRt and

JosHua H CossutH

Countless meteorology students enter college having what can quite accurately be described

as a romance for weather If this adolescent professional relationship could also be equated with a crush then heartbreak is what follows for many Those intensemdashbut superficialmdashchildhood feelings for meteorology are often later strained by unexpected but necessary courses in calculus physics and computing partially replacing romance with angst As is the case with life in general through reflection and perspective one will hopefully later find a much more profound appreciation This critical evolution can be made much more difficult by a poor advisor or much less painful by an excep-tional mentor The latter explicitly or implicitly reminds us why we fell in love with meteorology as a child This manuscript is dedicated to those mentors who made that process for students profoundly rewarding and equally to those students who persevered in the face of adver-sity and can now look up at the sky or down at a map and smile with a deeper and satisfying understanding

Herbert Riehl father of tropical meteorology author of the first textbook on the subject and but one individual from the very diverse origins of the field (Photograph used with permission from the Department of Atmospheric Science Colorado State University)

BACKGROUND AND METHODOLOGYWe all grow up with the weight of history on us Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies mdashShirley Abbott

We need to haunt the house of history and listen anew to the ancestorsrsquo wisdom mdashMaya Angelou

Never destroy any aspect of personality for what you think is the wild branch may be the heart of the tree mdashMrs Henry George (Agnes DeMillersquos grandmother)

Why waste your time and money looking up your family tree Just go into politics and your opponents will do it for you mdashMark Twain

W hi le informal meteorological studies trace back to antiquity tropical meteorol-

ogy itself is a very young sciencemdashdating back decades rather than centuries When this short existence is viewed in context of todayrsquos state of the field it implies two important characteristics 1) it seemingly has its birth from a diverse set of parents although the academic nature of those parents is unexplored and 2) a remarkable amount of progress in tropical meteorology has occurred in a relatively short period of time In light of this there has been a desire for some time within that community to document the roots of the field and to see how it interconnects with the classical sciences before such history is lost Indeed colleagues have discussed at numerous confer-ences the desire to pursue a robust

documentation of this academic genealogy or ldquofamily treerdquo At the Seventh International Workshop on Tropi-cal Cyclones (IWTC-VII) in La Reacuteunion France the authors decided to pursue this project buoyed by the late-night vigorous discussion with three colleagues (J McBride C Landsea and N Shay) and a unanimously appointed moderatorcatalyst (J Walker) see Fig 1

The goals of the project are multifaceted 1) first and foremost to document the human academic history of the field noting its diverse roots and continuing evolution today 2) to give young and senior scientists alike a perspective of their part and relation to others in their professional community 3) to provide the op-portunity (through as yet to be collected information) to trace the genesis and evolution of ideas within the community and 4) if successful to allow the tree to serve as a skeleton on which the history of the entire meteorological field could be developed

It was immediately apparent that difficulties would be encountered in pursuit of these goals The determi-nation of graduate major professors is relatively easily done today through solicitation of the living Finding that information for deceased colleagues however sometimes takes substantial detective work Further members of the community (living or deceased) can have more than one major professor or may consider their ldquomentorrdquo or ldquoadvisorrdquo a different person than the one who signed the thesis or dissertation Occasionally a colleague requested being listed as ldquoself-maderdquo without reference to hisher major professor (if any)

defeating the goal of a historical connectedness tree but it is a request that must be honored

While the response from colleagues on the pro-posed project was overwhelmingly positive there was a small minority response who felt it was an unwise idea The specific complaint was that the mere forma-tion of such a document would constitute a condoning of nepotism or aristocracy The authors respectfully but strongly disagree with this conclusion as no such objective measure of value or importance is explicitly given or even attempted in the resulting family tree Nonetheless as stated earlier the overwhelming re-sponse was positive to the idea with several colleagues providing suggestions and feedback as data collection began Below is one colleaguersquos provocative yet insight-ful perspective into the uniqueness of such a project

Academic family trees are unusual in that only prog-eny who become academics are able to reproduce1 It would seem that it is actually impossible to produce a bastard academic heir though in point of fact I know several individuals worthy of that title mdashName redacted

Academic lineages have been attempted with varying degrees of completion by some other disciplines such as theoretical computer sci-ence (Johnson 1984 Parberry and Johnson 1995) philosophy (httpswebspaceutexasedudeverj personalphiltreephiltreehtml) and neuroscience (David and Hayden 2012) The Mathematics Genealogy Project (Jackson 2007 httpgenealogy mathndsunodakeduindexphp) represents perhaps the current largest such undertaking hosting informa-tion for over 150000 individuals in studies of math and related disciplines Such a body of academic connec-tions can provide insight into specific traits inherited by the student from the mentor (Malmgren et al 2010) Indeed connections between societal networks and the sharing of ideas can be explored in many ways (Bowen and Wilson 2012) such as research collabora-tion (Newman 2001) One such other connection with mathematics colleagues is also shown in the ldquoErdoumls numberrdquo (Goffman 1969 Odda 1979) a measure of the ldquodegrees of separationrdquo from coauthorship with Paul Erdoumls Finally no publication on academic genealogies

would be complete without a (partially) satirical but (highly) insightful take on the topic (see www phdcomicscom Fig 2)

Depending upon the scope of the above-mentioned family trees a varying amount of information was requested The present project was initially targeted to the tropical meteorology community to keep the scope manageable so the information requested was straight-forward studentrsquos name major professorrsquos name(s) for the most senior degree the year of that degree and the institution granting that degree Solicitation requests for information were sent to three discussionmailing lists in 2012 tropical storms (hosted by Colorado State University) Map (hosted by University at Albany State University of New York) and the American Meteoro-logical Society (AMS)rsquos registration list for the 30th tropical meteorology conference held in April 2012 The resulting database was entered manually into a spreadsheet where multiple spellings of names and aliases were identified and resolved

Finding a suitable medium to visualize the incoming genealogical information proved to be one of the largest logistical issues Despite the over-whelming number of graphical products that could display such data Graphviz (httpgraphvizorg) was chosen as a simple yet hierarchical method to depict the family tree as a flowchart Plotting advice and sample Graphviz code were provided by Mitch Keller of the Mathematics Genealogy Project The data spreadsheet was converted into a format readable by Graphviz software and then the data were plotted as a tree within Graphviz Further the data were organized such that the treersquos vertical axis represents graduation year and each individual box is given a color based on the institution of the degree

This preliminary version of the tree provided an excellent skeleton however it was clear there were major holes and gaps within Occasionally it was easy to fill these by simply contacting students or grandstudents of a missing scientist However in some cases there was simply no memory of the de-tailed historical lineage2 Consequently the authors resorted to obituaries journal articles online or hard copy theses and other historical documentation to determine missing information In some cases where a branch of the tree connected back to the far more

AFFILIATIONS HaRt and CossutHmdashDepartment of Earth Ocean and Atmospheric Science The Florida State University Tallahassee FloridaCORRESPONDING AUTHOR Robert Hart Department of Earth Ocean and Atmospheric Science The Florida State University 404 Love Building Tallahassee FL 32306-4520E-mail rhartfsuedu

The abstract for this article can be found in this issue following the table of contentsDOI101175BAMS-D-12-001101

In final form 29 April 2013copy2013 American Meteorological Society

Fig 1 Late-night discussions of the proposed tree at IWTC-VII in La Reacuteunion Shown are (clockwise from bottom left) Josh Cossuth John McBride Robert Hart Lynn (Nick) Shay (Photo credit Christopher Landsea National Hurricane Center)

1 This is actually not necessarily true as some colleagues requested their nonacademic mentors be listed as the advisor or a coadvisor for their placement in the tree

2 The year of the most senior degree was the most commonly missing piece of information which is critical as it can signifi-cantly influence the vertical spacing of all progeny on the tree (and by extension the horizontal location of colleagues) If one advisorrsquos group of students is missing graduation year information then they are lined up together horizontally creating unappealing vertical white space

3DECEMBER 2013AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY |2 DECEMBER 2013|

mature Mathematics Genealogy Project it was easier to fill such holes by simply searching within that projectrsquos online database While Wikipedia often could help in filling these holes there were cases later discovered where the asserted major professor in Wikipedia was in question based upon feedback from that professorrsquos progeny thus other primary and secondary historical sources were searched (such as resorting to original hard copy theses in dusty libraries)

Several procedural hurdles had to be overcome to produce a viable electronic or printed version of the tree Despite the growing availability of novel presentation mediums (eg Prezi httpprezi com) the portability and ubiquitous ability to view very large image files made the image file option

more attractive Test raster images were produced although the inflexible for-mat and large file size made working with them diffi-cult Vector-based images notably in portable docu-ment format (PDF) proved to be more compact and able to be indexed but they presented other difficul-ties Adobe Acrobat Reader available for all environ-ments has a limit of 200 in (51 m) for PDFs it can dis-play While other software can display much larger PDFs each has drawbacks two such options are Evince (http projectsgnome orgevince limited zoom-ing and cannot search for text) and Brava Reader (wwwbravaviewercom download-brava-reader alleviates all prior draw-backs but it is only available in the Windows operating environment) Additionally most poster plotters have a finite width of printing which is generally smaller t ha n ne e de d to ma ke the family tree readable Consequently later versions of the tree had to be printed in multiple strips necessi-tating splitting the original

PDF into multiple files which can lead to artifacts at splice points Finally it was a considerable challenge to create a unique discernible color to correspond with each institution (given the number of institutions represented) while simultaneously avoiding color shadingtextndashcolor combinations that made reading the names difficult

THE CURRENT TREE STATISTICS AND ANECDOTES The first version of the tree was presented at AMSrsquos 30th Conference on Hurri-canes and Tropical Meteorology in April 2012 in Ponte Vedra Beach Florida This version displayed approximately 1000 scientists from over 100 institu-tions Figure 3 displays that first version of the tree

and a subset of the community that was examining it3

During the conference colleagues missing from the tree who wished to be added were able to submit their information During and after the conference numer-ous correspondences were received commenting on the project and the nature of the resulting tree Three of the most memorable comments are as follows

I heard from colleagues that the poses [of those viewing the tree] reminded them of people looking for relatives on the Vietnam Wall in DC (the latter obviously in an infinitely more important subject) Nonetheless there was clear expression in both body and verbal language of reverence for those who came before with many taking close-up pictures of their branches mdashParaphrased consensus of Ed Zipser and Lance Bosart

The analogies between this tree and [biological] genealogical trees kept me thinking about whether the former has examples of the latter for such possi-bilities as offshoots grafts adoptions and artificial insemination For the subject at hand I suppose we meteorologists are ldquomutationsrdquo from the Math Physics etc tree at least the mathematicians physi-cists etc seem to think of us as so Wersquod probably attribute it to evolution mdashEd Rappaport

Looking at it as an abstract work of art I was struck by how beautiful it ismdashlike some sort of exotic biblical temple or futuristic edifice in an unknown civilization mdashJeff Rosenfeld

Following the conference the additional information received was added to the tree leading to a total of 1136 scientists among 129 institutions The updated tree was next presented at the 93rd AMS Annual Meeting in Austin Texas in January 2013 using larger text to aid reading and spanned 167 ft (51 m) times 7 ft (21 m) Further feedback and entries were provided by attendees leading to the

current version that is necessarily shown without text in Fig 4 [a high-resolution PDF version of the tree (and future updates) is available online at httpmoemet fsuedufamilytree] The tree can be overwhelming at first glance given the number of colleagues presented and given that those currently alive are typically in the densest part of the tree (the bottom third) To aid navi-gation a ldquoroad maprdquo of a sample of early scientists was provided at the conference and is shown in updated form in Fig 5 Given the much broader and larger audience of the AMS annual meeting it was common throughout the week to have renowned scientists visit the tree and graciously volunteer invaluable and other-wise hard-to-find additional information (eg Fig 6)

The earliest ldquorootrdquo of the tree shown is a largely arbitrary choice to keep the printed size manageable as extending farther back in time rapidly compresses the most recent decades (with the most data) into an increasingly small vertical space Muumlller (1822) his student Helmholtz (1842) grandstudent Hertz (1880) and great-grandstudent V Bjerknes (1890) form this first branch of the tree (Fig 7a) In reality the tree can be extended backward centuries into the biological astronomical mathematics and physics communities through online searches of the Mathematics Genealogy Project (not shown) Additional early roots into the tropical family tree are shown in Fig 7b illustrating not only the wide range of parental study but also the broad diversity of geographic origin

Despite the admittedly incomplete content of the family tree at this time some interesting sta-tistics about the current incarnation of the tree are

3 While magnifying glasses were provided by the authors for those needing visual aid to read the immense detail of the tree it was noted that some senior colleagues did not wish to be caught in a photograph using the magnifying glasses for fear of later exploitation at retirement celebra-tions (or roasts)

Fig 3 Younger members of the tropical community examining the first version of the family tree at the banquet of the AMSrsquos 30th Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology (Photo credit Douglas Klotter The Florida State University)

Fig 2 An only partially satirical but highly insightful perspective on academic genealogies (Courtesy ldquoPiled Higher and Deeperrdquo by Jorge Cham wwwphd-comicscom used with permission)


express deep and sincere gratitude to those represented but also to illustrate the further human dimensions (including the undeniable humanity of intellectually revered figures) that cannot be communicated by the limited dimensions of the tree These anecdotes are not limited to studentndashadvisor relationships but extend to insightful perspectives about historical colleagues outside of mentoring

I finally got Rossby to agree to a final ldquodefense of thesisrdquo time in 1948 I went to the Institute of Meteo-rology and found that Rossby had been at a party the night before [undoubtedly at Frannie Dayrsquos (Ashley) apartment] At the party Rossby had been pacing up and down insisting that I (Bryson) would definitely not be passed the next day Hanging onto his arm and reasoning with him had been Irwin Biel asking him not to judge in advance Before the exam Biel took me aside and asked if I was aware that I had a hostile major professor I assured him I knew that He then said that he would not tell me what he himself was going to ask but would advise me to make my answers as concise and short as possible Rossby began the ldquodefense of thesisrdquo by saying that since none of the

committee had read the thesis (not true) the exami-nation would be a general exam on the entire field of meteorology He then leaned back as he always did when he was about to ask a blockbuster At that point Biel said ldquoCarl since Bryson is in my field of meteorol-ogy could I be the first to question himrdquo Rossby said ldquoOf course Irwinrdquo Biel reached in his pocket and took out a sheaf of papersmdashprepared questions Every so often as we fired questions and answers at each other Biel would ask Rossby if he knew that or comment that the answer wasnrsquot even in the literature An hour and a half later Biel folded his papers and said ldquoOne hundred questions one hundred correct answersrdquo Palmeacuten passed Fultz asked a simple question as did Byers and then Rossby asked his blockbuster I simply answered that I did not know how to answer (It is likely that Rossby did not either) I was sent out and recalled in two minutes to hear that I had passed Thank you forever Irwin Biel mdashReid Bryson on Carl Rossby and Irwin Biel (Bryson 2000)

In early 1942 the rain gauge at the Univ of Chicago was located at ground level If the record shows an all-time record rainfall in the summer of 1942 at that

Fig 4 The family tree as of Feb 2013 The vertical axis of the tree extends from (top) 1822 to (bottom) 2017 In the version shown here the (unreadable) text has been removed from the image to emphasize the distribution of schools of degree (the color shading)

provided Table 1 shows the institutions with the highest representation in the family tree Of note The Florida State University has the advantage of being the authorsrsquo institution with easy access to local information and Colorado State University recently documented online a plethora of historical information for the Atmospheric Science Depart-mentrsquos 50th anniversary (wwwatmoscolostateedu anniversaryanniversaryphp) Many institutions are clearly underrepresentedmdashespecially those out-side the United States The family treersquos bias toward currently active United Statesndashbased institutions partially accounts for many discrepancies as noted in the steep drop-off of information available before the mid-twentieth century (Fig 8) While the authors could have delayed publication until a hypothetically complete version of the tree was available it quickly became clear that such a state would likely never exist and that the most effective method for expanding the tree would be publication in its late adolescent state

During and after the solicitation process for col-leaguesrsquo information many anecdotes (serious and humorous) were provided as part of the information sent We share a selection of these anecdotes not only to

station donrsquot believe it The cadets relieved themselves there one night after a long beer-drinking session The gauge ran over mdashReid Bryson (on the role of anthropogenic forcing Bryson 2000)

When I left the Air Force and moved to Chicago to be one of Herbert Riehlrsquos graduate students I was a little concerned if we would be able to get along I had previously been in a few of Riehlrsquos classes as an Air Force student in 1953ndash54 and knew he had a temper and could be difficult at times Chuck Jordan (former Riehl PhD student) was just passing through Chicago at that time and I asked Chuck about working with Riehl Chuck smiled and told me ldquoOh donrsquot worry about Herbert he has mellowed a great deal in recent yearsmdashfor instance he no longer throws chairs at his graduate studentsrdquo mdashBill Gray and Charles Jordan on Herbert Riehl (W Gray 2013 personal communication)

Bill Gray used to take our completed PhD disserta-tion put a cover and report number on it and mail it out as a technical report to every US academic he could think of At the time Joanne Simpson was


suddenly taken ill and had to spend a week in hospital Leaving suddenly she grabbed the closest reading matter available on her desk It was my PhD having arrived in todayrsquos mail Joanne lay in the hospital for several days with my PhD and nothing else to read Decades later she would see me at a meeting and refer to ldquoyour damn PhD dissertationrdquo mdashJohn McBride on Bill Gray and Joanne Simpson (J McBride 2013 personal communication)

Our student office was located one hallway down from Dr Grayrsquos office at CSU [Colorado State University] Dr Grayrsquos daily routine was to work from home in the morning and come into the office in the afternoon At least once a week we would hear Dr Gray running down the hall keys jangling in his pockets toward our office His question invariably was ldquoShow me something new and sexy todayrsquo mdashChris Landsea on Bill Gray (C Landsea 2013 personal communication)

The story about Vic Ooyamarsquos thesis was well known in the Department [New York University] Vic went into [Bernard] Haurwitzrsquos office to discuss the thesis and Vic became so disgusted with the conversation that he threw the draft in the waste paper basket After Vic left the office Bernie picked the draft out of the trash can and had his secretary type it in final form and Vic received his PhD in record time (I believe it was one year after he received his MS4 mdashDick Greenfield on Vic Ooyama and Bernard Haurwitz (R Greenfield 2012 personal communication)

I was a graduate intern at sum-mer school at NCAR [National Center for Atmospheric Re-search] in 1976 working under Ed Zipser on GATE [Global At-mospheric Research Programrsquos Atlantic Tropical Experiment] data I wanted to look at some

of the radiosonde data and he told me to go to Vic Ooyama (who was working there at the time) I did not then know Vic or had even heard of him I went to his office and asked if I could analyze some of the radiosonde data He gave a sharp and highly sardonic laugh and then told me in a somewhat hostile way that he had been working on fixing all the problems with that data for the last 6 months and now some kid just wants to grab it and analyze it I canrsquot remember whether I ever got that data or not mdashKerry Emanuel on Vic Ooyama (K Emanuel 2013 personal communication)

The authors welcome additional anecdotes through the contact information given below and plan to com-prise a web page dedicated to their display

FUTURE EXPANSION ALL OF METEO-ROLOGY Immediately after beginning this project it became apparent that titling the family tree as for ldquotropical meteorologyrdquo was inherently fraudulent The roots of the tree span numerous fields (eg math-ematics physics and physiology) and the community is growing rapidly through ldquoparentsrdquo originating outside the conventional tropical designation Further many scientists originating in the tropical community have diversified their work Readers will undoubtedly note that many of the early scientists in the tree (eg Fig 5) would also form similar roots for

4 At the first oral presentation of this work at the 93rd Annual AMS Meeting in Austin Texas (Hart and Cossuth 2013) it was noted to students in the audience at this point that it would be unwise for them perhaps hoping to accelerate their graduation to emulate Ooyama in this one regardF

ig 5

A z

oo

m o

f th

e to

p h

alf

of

the

tree

fo

r (a

) th

e to

p-l

eft

qu

adra

nt

and

(b

) th

e to

p-r

igh

t q

uad

ran

t w

ith

a s

amp

ling

of

earl

y h

isto

rica

l fig

ure

s an

no

tate

d

Fig 6 (foreground standing left to right) George Kiladis Paul Julian and Roland Madden among colleagues inspecting the updated version (7 ft times 16 ft) of the tree at the 93rd AMS Annual Meeting in Austin TX in Jan 2013 (Photograph courtesy Robert Hart The Florida State University)


a family tree on midlatitudebaroclinic meteorology In short this genealogy was never really a purely tropical one It is thus proposed that this genealogy be expanded to all of meteorology and the authors welcome submissions (either for the reader himself or herself or for colleagues) from the broader meteorol-ogy community (send to metfamilytreegmailcom)

The current version of the tree is available online (httpmoemetfsuedufamilytree) Future versions resulting from the broadening to all of meteorology (and for correcting inevitable errors) will be available at the same location Caution is advised when exam-ining electronic future versions of the tree however Many of the figures shown in this paper are going to

dramatically change as additional parents and their children are added as a consequence of this expansion as well as the natural procreation of children from par-ents already identified It is expected that in the very near future the entire tree will become too big to print (or perhaps simply too large to hang in a building hall-way of typical 25ndash3-m height) The authors hope that very large screen liquid crystal display (LCD) monitors (eg 3ndash4 m or larger) will become reasonably priced in the near future such that an interactive searchable zoomable and perhaps instantly modifiable tree can be readily displayed at all upcoming conferences5

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It is not possible to acknowledge individually the hundreds if not thousands of scientists who have submitted information as part of the family tree Indeed we extend gratitude to each and every scientist represented here Particular thanks are given to the following individuals for their invaluable work on this project Kelly Hirai of The Florida State University for his work on the postprocessing modification and printing of the tree Mitch Keller of the Mathematics Genealogy Project for his advice and examples for graphical display of family tree information Carol Wolf of University of California Berkeley for her investigative work on Hans

5 The authors are optimistic that existing AMS conference registration pricing can absorb this additional cost without any increase

Fig 7 (a) The (arbitrary) earliest root in the tree covering the first five generations starting with Muller and leading into V Bjerknes and (b) four additional early roots into the tree Note that for space reasons the branches above are simplifications of how they actually appear in the full tree in Fig 4 Subsequent students of Taylor Lettau Sutherland and Philips are not shown for space reasons as well

Table 1 List of the institutions represented by the number of graduates in the family tree with a requirement of five students per institution for brevity As mentioned in the text the authors acknowledge this table is grossly incomplete and encourage completion of this history through additional scientist submissions

The Florida State University 212

Colorado State University 170

The Pennsylvania State University 76

Massachusetts Institute of Technology 58

University of WisconsinndashMadison 40

University of Washington 37

University at Albany State University of New York 32

University of Miami 26

University of Chicago 24

Texas AampM University 22

Princeton University 16

University of California Los Angeles 15

Harvard University 15

US Naval Postgraduate School 15

Imperial College London 15

University of Colorado Boulder 15

National Taiwan University 14

University of Cambridge 13

University of Hawairsquoi at Matildenoa 13

University of Utah 12

Monash University 11

Georgia Institute of Technology 10

University of Illinois UrbanandashChampaign 9

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology 8

Purdue University 8

University of Oklahoma 8

University of Reading 7

North Carolina State University 7

New York University 7

McGill University 7

Florida International University 6

The University of Arizona 6

University of Maryland College Park 6

University of Tokyo 6

Chinese Culture University 5

Texas Tech University 5

University of Oslo 5

University of Melbourne 5

Fig 8 Number of entries by year of graduation

a) b)


ABSTRACT

As part of the American Meteorological Societyrsquos 30th Conference on Hurricanes and

Tropical Meteorology in Ponte Vedra Beach Florida in April 2012 an academic lineage

(ldquofamily treerdquo) of that community was presented to document the history of contributors

to the field on the anniversary For every self-identified or colleague-identified tropical me-

teorology scientist the year of the personrsquos most senior degree major professor or mentors

of that degree and institution of that degree were documented and graphically presented

This information was supplemented through mining of websites libraries news and journal

articles obituaries and other various historical archives This manuscript documents the

genesis of the family tree the overall history represented by it some statistics represented by

the current incarnation colorful personal stories that have come forward during its develop-

ment and plans for its expansion to the broader meteorology community

Panofskyrsquos lineage from original thesis hard copies Darlene Oosterhof for T N Krishnamurti rsquos student record Amie Hedstrom and Phil Klotzbach for Bill Grayrsquos student record and Riehl information Robert Houze Peter Webster and Ed Zipser for their respective student records T N Krishnamurti Howard Friedman Robert Rogers Dick Greenfeld and Yoko Ooyama for Vic Ooyama and Bernard Haurwitzrsquos lineages and the following for providing information or filling numerous gaps in the family tree John Dutton Jenni Evans Bill Frank Richard Johnson T N Krishnamurti Gabriel Lau Frank Marks Sharon Nicholson Abraham Oort Jean Phillips Robert Rogers Christine Sherratt Gabe Vecchi and Ed Zipser Several articles served as a wealth of information for filling additional gaps in the tree including but not limited to Lewis (1992 1993) Lewis et al (2012) Reiter (1998) and Rittner (2003) We also profusely thank the Department of Atmospheric Science at CSU for their 50th anniversary web page as a valuable source of data for this project The authors are grateful to those cited therein those who pro-vided photographs and others who provided anecdotes The authors thank Jorge Cham of wwwphdcomicscom for the use of that websitersquos cartoon The manuscript dedication was partially inspired by comments made by Jon Merritt of The Pennsylvania State University during the first authorrsquos first week of college The authors thank J McBride C Landsea N Shay and J Walker for their enthusiastic support in encouraging this project The AMS in particular Marge Huntington and Jennifer Ives has been generous with its f lexibility in displaying a poster of unusual size at the two conferences stated earlier Finally the authors appreciate the critical suggestions provided by three reviewers

REFERENCESBowen J P and R J Wilson 2012 Visualising vir-

tual communities From Erdoumls to the arts EVA London 2012 Electronic Visualisation and the Arts S Dunn J P Bowen and K Ng Eds British Com-puter Society 238ndash244 [Available online at httparXiv12073420]

Bryson R 2000 Remembrances for the 60th anniver-sary of the meteorology program at the University of Chicago [Available online at httpkopionuchicago edudrallenremembranceshtml]

David S V and B Y Hayden 2012 Neurotree A collaborative graphical database of the academic genealogy of neuroscience PLoS One 7 (10) e46608 doi101371journalpone0046608

Goffman C 1969 And what is your Erdoumls number Amer Math Mon 76 791

Hart R E and J Cossuth 2013 An academic family tree of the tropical meteorology community Preprints 11th History Symp Austin TX Amer Meteor Soc 14 [Available online at httpsamsconfexcom ams93AnnualwebprogramPaper220220html]

Jackson A 2007 A labor of love The Mathemat-ics Genealogy Project Not Amer Math Soc 54 1002ndash1003

Johnson D S 1984 The genealogy of theoretical com-puter science A preliminary report SIGACT News No 2 Association for Computing Machinery New York NY 36ndash49

Lewis J M 1992 Carl-Gustaf Rossby A Study in Mentorship Bull Amer Meteor Soc 73 1425ndash1438

mdash 1993 Meteorologists from the University of Tokyo Their exodus to the United States following World War II Bull Amer Meteor Soc 74 1351ndash1360

mdash M G Fearon and H E Klieforth 2012 Herbert Riehl Intrepid and enigmatic scholar Bull Amer Meteor Soc 93 963ndash985

Malmgren R J Ottino and L Amaral 2010 The role of mentorship in protege performance Nature 465 622ndash627

Newman M E J 2001 The structure of scientific collaboration networks Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 98 404ndash409

Odda T 1979 On properties of a well-known graph or what is your Ramsey number Ann N Y Acad Sci 328 166ndash172

Parberry I and DS Johnson 1995 The SIGACT theoretical computer science genealogy Preliminary report Electronic Publishing and the Information Superhighway Enabling Technologies Issues Applications J Ford F Makedon and S Rebelsky Eds Birkhaumluser 197ndash205

Reiter E R 1998 Herb Personal reflections by Elmar R Reiter with the help of others Meteor Atmos Phys 67 5ndash14

Rittner D 2003 A to Z of Scientists in Weather and Climate Facts on File Inc 273 pp


BACKGROUND AND METHODOLOGYWe all grow up with the weight of history on us Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies mdashShirley Abbott

We need to haunt the house of history and listen anew to the ancestorsrsquo wisdom mdashMaya Angelou

Never destroy any aspect of personality for what you think is the wild branch may be the heart of the tree mdashMrs Henry George (Agnes DeMillersquos grandmother)

Why waste your time and money looking up your family tree Just go into politics and your opponents will do it for you mdashMark Twain

W hi le informal meteorological studies trace back to antiquity tropical meteorol-

ogy itself is a very young sciencemdashdating back decades rather than centuries When this short existence is viewed in context of todayrsquos state of the field it implies two important characteristics 1) it seemingly has its birth from a diverse set of parents although the academic nature of those parents is unexplored and 2) a remarkable amount of progress in tropical meteorology has occurred in a relatively short period of time In light of this there has been a desire for some time within that community to document the roots of the field and to see how it interconnects with the classical sciences before such history is lost Indeed colleagues have discussed at numerous confer-ences the desire to pursue a robust

documentation of this academic genealogy or ldquofamily treerdquo At the Seventh International Workshop on Tropi-cal Cyclones (IWTC-VII) in La Reacuteunion France the authors decided to pursue this project buoyed by the late-night vigorous discussion with three colleagues (J McBride C Landsea and N Shay) and a unanimously appointed moderatorcatalyst (J Walker) see Fig 1

The goals of the project are multifaceted 1) first and foremost to document the human academic history of the field noting its diverse roots and continuing evolution today 2) to give young and senior scientists alike a perspective of their part and relation to others in their professional community 3) to provide the op-portunity (through as yet to be collected information) to trace the genesis and evolution of ideas within the community and 4) if successful to allow the tree to serve as a skeleton on which the history of the entire meteorological field could be developed

It was immediately apparent that difficulties would be encountered in pursuit of these goals The determi-nation of graduate major professors is relatively easily done today through solicitation of the living Finding that information for deceased colleagues however sometimes takes substantial detective work Further members of the community (living or deceased) can have more than one major professor or may consider their ldquomentorrdquo or ldquoadvisorrdquo a different person than the one who signed the thesis or dissertation Occasionally a colleague requested being listed as ldquoself-maderdquo without reference to hisher major professor (if any)

defeating the goal of a historical connectedness tree but it is a request that must be honored

While the response from colleagues on the pro-posed project was overwhelmingly positive there was a small minority response who felt it was an unwise idea The specific complaint was that the mere forma-tion of such a document would constitute a condoning of nepotism or aristocracy The authors respectfully but strongly disagree with this conclusion as no such objective measure of value or importance is explicitly given or even attempted in the resulting family tree Nonetheless as stated earlier the overwhelming re-sponse was positive to the idea with several colleagues providing suggestions and feedback as data collection began Below is one colleaguersquos provocative yet insight-ful perspective into the uniqueness of such a project

Academic family trees are unusual in that only prog-eny who become academics are able to reproduce1 It would seem that it is actually impossible to produce a bastard academic heir though in point of fact I know several individuals worthy of that title mdashName redacted

Academic lineages have been attempted with varying degrees of completion by some other disciplines such as theoretical computer sci-ence (Johnson 1984 Parberry and Johnson 1995) philosophy (httpswebspaceutexasedudeverj personalphiltreephiltreehtml) and neuroscience (David and Hayden 2012) The Mathematics Genealogy Project (Jackson 2007 httpgenealogy mathndsunodakeduindexphp) represents perhaps the current largest such undertaking hosting informa-tion for over 150000 individuals in studies of math and related disciplines Such a body of academic connec-tions can provide insight into specific traits inherited by the student from the mentor (Malmgren et al 2010) Indeed connections between societal networks and the sharing of ideas can be explored in many ways (Bowen and Wilson 2012) such as research collabora-tion (Newman 2001) One such other connection with mathematics colleagues is also shown in the ldquoErdoumls numberrdquo (Goffman 1969 Odda 1979) a measure of the ldquodegrees of separationrdquo from coauthorship with Paul Erdoumls Finally no publication on academic genealogies

would be complete without a (partially) satirical but (highly) insightful take on the topic (see www phdcomicscom Fig 2)

Depending upon the scope of the above-mentioned family trees a varying amount of information was requested The present project was initially targeted to the tropical meteorology community to keep the scope manageable so the information requested was straight-forward studentrsquos name major professorrsquos name(s) for the most senior degree the year of that degree and the institution granting that degree Solicitation requests for information were sent to three discussionmailing lists in 2012 tropical storms (hosted by Colorado State University) Map (hosted by University at Albany State University of New York) and the American Meteoro-logical Society (AMS)rsquos registration list for the 30th tropical meteorology conference held in April 2012 The resulting database was entered manually into a spreadsheet where multiple spellings of names and aliases were identified and resolved

Finding a suitable medium to visualize the incoming genealogical information proved to be one of the largest logistical issues Despite the over-whelming number of graphical products that could display such data Graphviz (httpgraphvizorg) was chosen as a simple yet hierarchical method to depict the family tree as a flowchart Plotting advice and sample Graphviz code were provided by Mitch Keller of the Mathematics Genealogy Project The data spreadsheet was converted into a format readable by Graphviz software and then the data were plotted as a tree within Graphviz Further the data were organized such that the treersquos vertical axis represents graduation year and each individual box is given a color based on the institution of the degree

This preliminary version of the tree provided an excellent skeleton however it was clear there were major holes and gaps within Occasionally it was easy to fill these by simply contacting students or grandstudents of a missing scientist However in some cases there was simply no memory of the de-tailed historical lineage2 Consequently the authors resorted to obituaries journal articles online or hard copy theses and other historical documentation to determine missing information In some cases where a branch of the tree connected back to the far more

AFFILIATIONS HaRt and CossutHmdashDepartment of Earth Ocean and Atmospheric Science The Florida State University Tallahassee FloridaCORRESPONDING AUTHOR Robert Hart Department of Earth Ocean and Atmospheric Science The Florida State University 404 Love Building Tallahassee FL 32306-4520E-mail rhartfsuedu

The abstract for this article can be found in this issue following the table of contentsDOI101175BAMS-D-12-001101

In final form 29 April 2013copy2013 American Meteorological Society

Fig 1 Late-night discussions of the proposed tree at IWTC-VII in La Reacuteunion Shown are (clockwise from bottom left) Josh Cossuth John McBride Robert Hart Lynn (Nick) Shay (Photo credit Christopher Landsea National Hurricane Center)

1 This is actually not necessarily true as some colleagues requested their nonacademic mentors be listed as the advisor or a coadvisor for their placement in the tree

2 The year of the most senior degree was the most commonly missing piece of information which is critical as it can signifi-cantly influence the vertical spacing of all progeny on the tree (and by extension the horizontal location of colleagues) If one advisorrsquos group of students is missing graduation year information then they are lined up together horizontally creating unappealing vertical white space







































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Purdue University 8





McGill University 7










a) b)


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e to

p-l

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(b

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Purdue University 8





McGill University 7










a) b)


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Purdue University 8





McGill University 7










a) b)


ABSTRACT































ABSTRACT































a family tree of tropical meteorology’s academic community...

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