biography
| name: |
Rossby, Carl-Gustaf (Arvid)
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1898–1957)
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| biography:
| Meteorologist, born in Stockholm, Sweden. His early work in meteorology was at the Bergen Institute in Norway under the famous Vilhelm Bjerknes. He went to the USA (1926) on a one-year fellowship to the US Weather Bureau, got married (1929), and became a US citizen (1939). (He would return to Sweden in 1950 at the request of the Swedish government to help found the Institute of Meteorology at the University of Stockholm.) His influence in the USA is felt at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1928–39) and the University of Chicago (1941–50), where he organized strong meteorological departments. At the US Weather Bureau (1939–41) he redirected scientific efforts to incorporate important Scandinavian advances in the description of weather fronts and storms. He discovered what are now known as Rossby waves, a description of the flow of air within the jet stream, and the Rossby equation that calculates how fast the flow develops. A medal bearing his name is given by the American Meteorological Society to honour significant research. |
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