biography
| name: |
Schaefer, Vincent J(oseph)
|
pronunciation:
[shayfer]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1906–93)
|
| biography:
| Meteorologist, born in Schenectady, New York, USA. He left high school at age 16 to help support his family, and enrolled in the General Electric (GE) Apprentice School (1922–6). He worked in the GE Research Laboratory Instrument Shop, where he so impressed Irving Langmuir that he became his research assistant (1933–8) and associate (1938–54). For the US government during World War 2, they designed an efficient smoke generator to screen military operations, improved the filter for gas masks, and tackled the problem of icing on aeroplane wings. In the course of this project, Schaefer caused a cloud to ‘snow’ by seeding it with dry ice from an aeroplane (1946). This resulted in the five-year government sponsored ‘Project Cirrus’ at GE to study cloud seeding. In 1952 he became director of research at Munitalp Foundation and in 1959 he joined the faculty at the State University of New York, Albany, where he was instrumental in establishing the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center of which he was the first director (1960–76). He retired in 1976 after receiving two honorary degrees, including ScD from Notre Dame University (1948), and several awards including the prestigious Robert M Losey Award (1953). He wrote more than 270 scientific papers and co-wrote Field Guide to the Atmosphere (1983). |
|
|
