| Eminent
meteorologist Joanne Simpson has become the
first woman on the Mesa Lab’s
Atmospheric Sciences Honor Wall. At a November
29 ceremony, UCAR president Rick Anthes
(left) and MMM senior scientist Peggy LeMone
hang a portrait of Joanne next to the portraits
of five influential men  in the atmospheric
sciences (Lloyd Berkner, John Von Neumann,
Philip Thompson, Alan Waterman, and Carl-Gustaf
Rossby). “I am absolutely overwhelmed
and delighted,” said Joanne, who joined
the November 29 ceremony by speaker phone
from her house in Maryland. An inspiration
to female scientists, Joanne in 1949
became the first U.S. woman to earn a Ph.D.
in meteorology. She went on to make her mark
in research areas ranging from tropical storms
and air-sea interactions to weather modification
and cloud modeling, spending much of her
career with the NASA Goddard Space Flight
Center. Although she faced obstacles at first
as a woman in a male-dominated field, she
said, “You have to have self-confidence.
You have to look at the thing and say, ‘I
can do it.’ ” A number of veteran
scientists who have worked with Joanne congratulated
her at the ML ceremony, including former
NCAR director Bob Serafin and Joach Kuettner
of JOSS, who met Joanne at a conference more
than 50 years ago. Standing at the honor
wall by the Damon Room, Peggy told Joanne, “You
will be here virtually, and you can serve
as an inspiration to the women and the men
here at NCAR who pass by here.”. |
