First female meterologist Ph.D. visits MSRC

Role model, Joanne Simpson, in her other role, as grandmother

Joanne Simpson, this Spring’s Distinguished Visiting Scholar at MSRC, has had a large dose of institutions and individuals throwing up barriers and slamming doors shut in front of her. That message was the topic of her talk at MSRC’s informal Friday Discussion Group. But the subtext of her talk was that she managed to turn around the adversities and use them as advantages to become the first woman Ph.D. in meteorology (1949), an eminent atmospheric scientist, member of the National Academy of Engineering, and recipient of several awards from the American Meteorological Society, including its highest award, the Rossby Prize.

In recounting her difficult pathway to eminence, this very modern and youthful septuagenarian captivated her audience with anecdotes of career successes despite collegial disdain, insults, and shunning. Simpson exuded grace and a healthy sense of humor in describing the gender bias she endured from the 1940s until just recently. She related, for example, how she was fired from her job the day after she married a researcher at the same university because of strict nepotism rules and
the belief that married women did not need to work.

But she never considered giving up her pursuit of a doctoral degree, despite being turned down by the University of Chicago for support in a Ph.D. program and having her application ignored by all the many other Ph.D. programs. Her first major break came when the Illinois Institute of Technology, the only institute that acknowledged her application for graduate school, responded by asking her to teach physics to their aviation cadets. This allowed her to support herself while taking graduate courses at the University of Chicago and gain teaching experience.

A second turning point came in 1947, when she took her first field course in tropical meteorology. “When I took this course, it hit me-this is what I wanted to do,” said Simpson, undertaking a project to learn how tropical cumulus clouds formed by flying an aircraft inside and outside of them. She later received a grant to study the flow of the atmosphere over heated islands, investigating cloud streams and working on what would become the first computer model of cumulus clouds.

Eventually Simpson was given an endowed chair at the University of Virginia but in the 1970s they were still hostile to female academics. “So I left,” said Simpson. Later, she held positions as head of NOAA’s Experimental Meteorology Lab in Coral Gables ,Florida , and at UCLA where both she and her husband were hired as full professors, breaking the nepotism rules for the first time. She is currently Chief Scientist for Meteorology at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and Project Scientist for the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, a joint NASA and Japan satellite program.

Simpson told of two other keys to her success: attending an all-girls’ preparatory academy, where she could be smart without the intimidation that girls often feel in mixed classes, and being shunned by the male-dominated university community. “One advantage of being shunned was that I was left alone and had lots of time to think and do my projects.” Remarking about the changes for women in science today, she said, “Look how many of you are here in this room,” and added, laughing, “and the men aren’t afraid to sit next to you.”