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From the Archives

January 8, 2015

Joanne Malkus Simpson  was the first female meteorologist to earn a doctorate. She discovered what keeps hurricanes moving forward and revealed what drives the atmospheric currents in the tropics. As a research associate at WHOI in the late-1940s and early-1950s, she devised some of the first mathematical models of clouds. To validate her work, she needed to fly into tall clouds near the equator. The Navy lent WHOI an old PBY-6A airplane, but at WHOI during that time, women were not allowed to do field research. The naval officer who arranged the aircraft, however, said, “No Joanne, no airplane.” She flew.(Photo by Jan Hahn, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)