Verner Suomi: The Life and Work of the Founder of Satellite Meteorology

Verner Suomi

The Life and Work of the Founder of Satellite Meteorology

John M. Lewis with Jean M. Phillips, W. Paul Menzel, Thomas H. Vonder Haar, Hans Moosmüller, Frederick B. House, and Matthew G. Fearon

AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY

Verner Suomi: The Life and Work of the Founder of Satellite Meteorology © 2018 by John M. Lewis with Jean M. Phillips, W. Paul Menzel, Thomas H. Vonder Haar, Hans Moosmüller, Frederick B. House, and Matthew G. Fearon. All rights reserved. Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this book in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided the source is acknowledged.

Front cover photograph: Verner E. Suomi (left) and Robert Parent examine radiation balance instrument, 1959 (courtesy of University of Wisconsin Archives).

Published by the American Meteorological Society

45 Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02108

Print ISBN: 978-1-944970-22-2

eISBN: 978-1-944970-23-9

The mission of the American Meteorological Society is to advance the atmospheric and related sciences, technologies, applications, and services for the benefit of society. Founded in 1919, the AMS has a membership of more than 13,000 and represents the premier scientific and professional society serving the atmospheric and related sciences. Additional information regarding society activities and membership can be found at www.ametsoc.org.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lewis, John M., 1939– author. | Phillips, Jean M., 1958– author.

Title: Verner Suomi : the life and work of the founder of satellite meteorology / by John M. Lewis ; with Jean M. Phillips [and five others].

Description: Boston, Massachusetts : American Meteorological Society, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017047857 (print) | LCCN 2017056538 (ebook) | ISBN 9781944970239 (eBook) | ISBN 9781944970222 (pbk.)

Subjects: LCSH: Suomi, Verner, 1915-1995. | Meteorologists-United States—Biography. | Satellite meteorology.

Classification: LCC QC858.S86 (ebook) | LCC QC858.S86 L49 2018 (print) | DDC 551.5092—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017047857

To Anard Pucky Suomi

Altruistic Brother of Verner Suomi

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Part I: The Winding Road to Meteorology

1. On the Mesabi during the Great Depression

2. Road to Winona and Chicago

3. Entrée into Meteorology: Cadet to Instructor at the University of Chicago

4. Suomi’s Research Style at the University of Chicago

5. Professorship at UW–Madison: Early Years (1948–1953)

6. Epiphany at Chicago

Part II: Earth’s Heat Budget from Space

7. Suomi–Parent Ping-Pong Radiometer and Its Principle of Operation

8. Explorer VII: The Magnificent Voyage

9. Earth’s Radiation Budget from Satellites: Theme of the 1960s

Part III: Space Science and Engineering Center: An Institute for Satellite Meteorology

10. Perfect Timing: NWP and Satellite Meteorology Merge

11. Panoramic View of Suomi’s Research Themes at SSEC

12. Suomi’s Model for Conducting Research at SSEC

Part IV: Notable Research Themes: Their Past, Present, and Future

13. Ocean–Atmosphere Interaction

14. Atmospheres of Neighboring Planets

15. Satellite Data in Service to NWP

Part V: Suomi’s Uniqueness

16. Curtain Call: Last Project and Last Days

17. Epilogue

A. Robert J. Parent’s Vita

B. Vignettes

C. Mentorship

D. Suomi’s People: List of Coworkers, Protégés, and Colleagues

E. Suomi’s Witticisms and Aphorisms

References

Index

Preface

Verner Suomi’s life (1915–1995) began on the Iron Range of northeastern Minnesota, where he displayed extraordinary skills in the mining town’s well-equipped industrial arts shops. Work in a depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps camp led to an opportunity to attend Winona State Teachers College, where his studies in education spared him from a life in the mines. Suomi then assumed a settled life as a schoolteacher of science on the prairies of south-central Minnesota for four years. But the vicissitudes of World War II put him on another path—the second life. And although this second life started innocuously as a meteorological trainee in the University of Chicago’s Cadet Program, he steadily advanced in academia as a researcher and teacher and then as a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he founded the Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC), came to be known as the father of satellite meteorology, and was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1977.

In this scientific biography, the reader will see that Suomi was that rare combination of unifier and diversifier in Freeman Dyson’s definition of physicists in his stimulating book Infinite in All Directions (Dyson 1988). Suomi chose his problems with the simplicity and majesty of an abstract thinker, but he never overlooked a detail, especially in the construction of a gadget to make measurements on the path to solving a problem that held promise for benefiting the world’s citizenry. These qualities are praised in a passage from a letter written by future director of the SSEC Hank Revercomb to Suomi on July 20, 1995 (10 days before his death):

You engender the super energy and power that can be unleashed by genuinely inspired interest in solving important problems for mankind (and the challenge of doing it).

Suomi defined variance of the human spirit. He was like a crystal in the sunlight—exhibiting a spectrum of colors. If you only knew his name, it is likely that the refracted ray would spell satellite meteorology. But if you knew him from a conference or seminar, you would remember him for his simplicity of expression on a complicated topic, ease of talking with animated gestures, and vocalizing with a melodic tone. And if you worked at SSEC or otherwise knew him as a colleague, you would remember him as a friend, if an outspoken one.

This biography follows Suomi’s path, far from orderly, to prominence, revealing an almost mystical fortuity: his creative energy perfectly coincides with the spirit of the time, his natural talent with the world’s mania for space and space science. Without planning, he had prepared himself perfectly for the marriage between the artificial satellite and scientific measurements from space. And with the good fortune of striking friendship and collaboration with Robert Parent, the brilliant electrical engineering professor at UW–Madison, together they succeeded in measuring the Earth’s heat budget with instrumentation aboard Explorer VII.

This scientific biography of Suomi was inspired by events in 2009 surrounding the 50-year celebration of the Explorer VII mission. Following the celebration, key organizers Jean Phillips and Paul Menzel were inspired to initiate a Suomi biography project. It would be an elaboration and expansion on the article written by John Lewis and coauthors, Suomi: Pragmatic Visionary (Lewis et al. 2010). Thus, in 2012, a team consisting of Suomi colleagues and protégés was formed to write the biography. Rather than a set of separate articles that describe the character and work of Suomi, a decision was made to construct a continuous storyline with input from all authors and a host of other contributors. We have strived to present this story in a singular voice that reflects our collective passion and knowledge.

Acknowledgments

We have benefitted greatly from interviews with Suomi’s children (Lois Young and Eric Suomi) and his niece (Judi Suomi Maki), with Robert Parent’s children (Patti Calloway and Barbara Parent), and with Suomi’s students, protégés, and colleagues, many still active in science. Interviews with the following scientists were especially valuable:

Eric Anderssen

Stephen Cox

Robert Fox

Thomas Haig

Donald Johnson

John LeMarshall

Graham Mills

Henry Revercomb

Douglas Sargeant

William Smith

John Young

William Bourke

John Eyre

Douglas Gauntlett

Martin Hoerling

Graeme Kelly

Ronald McPherson

Pierre Morel

James Rasmussen

Johannes Schmetz

Lawrence Sromovsky

Christopher Velden

Others, whose oral histories and/or personal communications added details to the scientific biography, are:

Douglas Allen

Werner Baum

Horace Byers

Dave Fultz

Julius London

Noburo Nakamura

Norman Phillips

Carl Rossby

Henry Stommel

Aksel Wiin-Nielsen

Harriet Woodcock

Francis Ashley

Reid Bryson

Jule Charney

Kenneth Johnson

Pierre Morel

Donald Osterbrock

George Platzman

Timothy Schmit

James Weinman

William Togstad

Oliver Wulf

We also benefitted from written tributes to Suomi by:

Fred Best

Joost Businger

David Jones

John Roberts

Charles Stearns

Eugene Buchholtz

William Hibbard

Scott Lindstrom

Henry Schmit

Anthony Wendricks

Archivist Richard Popp scoured the Announcements in the Physical Sciences at the University of Chicago and uncovered the requirements for the PhD in meteorology, and archivist Elizabeth Andrews at MIT delivered important materials that helped define Rossby’s view of mentorship.

The Suomi Archive at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Schwerdtfeger Library includes hundreds of formal letters and informal notes, sketches of his engineering ideas, photographs, interviews (transcribed and audible), and a complete set of his technical papers, formal publications, and patents. It provided the solid underpinning for the project. A special thanks goes to Jean Phillips, the UW–Madison archivist and librarian with an encyclopedic knowledge of Verner Suomi’s life, who was the stimulus behind the project and coauthor of the book, as well as to her colleague, Linda Hedges.

We are indebted to Bill Bourke for an invaluable review of the manuscript. As typical of good reviewers, Bill identified references that added substance to various chapters, suggested changes in wording that clarified arguments, and asked penetrating questions that led to some restructuring of the manuscript.

Finally, we thank the Publications Department of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) for sponsorship and for offering valued advice at every phase of the four-year project. Those deserving special credit are the editors, Sarah Jane Shangraw (AMS Books Managing Editor) and James Fleming (AMS Books History Editor at Large). Their encouragement gave us energy and purpose. They, in turn, were both strongly supported by Ken Heideman (Director of Publications) and Beth Dayton (AMS Books Production Manager), among other excellent Publications staff.

I

The Winding Road to Meteorology

CHAPTER ONE

On the Mesabi during the Great Depression

Verner E. Suomi (1915–1995) was born and raised in Eveleth, Minnesota, the sixth of seven children—five girls and two boys.¹ In his unique way of viewing life, he commented, I always complained that my sisters had two brothers and I only had one (Suomi et al. 1994). And, indeed, Vern’s brother Anard, nine years his elder, became Vern’s guiding light [see Vignettes, Judi (Suomi) Maki].

Eveleth was one of the prominent mining towns on the Mesabi Range. Much of the world’s supply of iron ore came from the cavernous open-pit mines along this twisting, narrow, 120-mile stretch of land in northeastern Minnesota (Figure 1.1). Industrial giants clamored for the rights to this land after the high-grade ore (hematite) was discovered in 1892, and by the end of the century the productive parts of the range were identified. There was an immediate need for strong men to work the mines, and immigrants from across the Atlantic descended on the towns of Grand Rapids, Hibbing, Virginia, Eveleth, Biwabik, and Babbitt, the hotbeds of iron ore along the Mesabi. Vern’s mother and father emigrated from Finland to Eveleth in 1902, where Vern’s father found work as a carpenter in the mines.

The land was raw with outcroppings of ancient bedrock, overlain in places by layers of gravelly soil left by the advance and retreat of glaciers during the ice ages. Extraction of the iron ore, oft times imbedded in boulders along angled ribbons of rock beneath the soil, proved challenging for both steam-driven shovels and men with pick, shovel, and wheelbarrow who toiled beside the machinery. Pictures of the deep open-pit Spruce Mine in Eveleth and the men who worked that mine are shown in Figures 1.2 and 1.3. Eveleth was nudged up against this mine, and an aerial photograph of the city is shown in Figure 1.4.

Suomi’s oral history interviews (Suomi and Lewis 1990; Suomi et al. 1994) reveal that the family was not poverty-stricken. Nevertheless, conditions were only a notch or two above the hardscrabble life—conditions that included a house and a bunkhouse (where Anard and Vern resided in spring, summer, fall, and early winter), both structures without the benefits of running water and electricity. Their food primarily came from a large garden, and the family canned the excess to provide a year-long supply of vegetables. The children had limited but adequate clothing, and, in his characteristically optimistic manner, Vern said,

it was basically a happy family. We were Lutherans and went to church every Sunday, and then Sunday School . . . my mother