Breaking Through the Clouds

Joanne Simpson made groundbreaking-or should we say cloudbreaking-discoveries about weather and how it worked. Born in Massachusetts in 1923, she became interested in clouds while sailing in Cape Cod. As a young adult, she went to the University of Chicago and began studying and then teaching meteorology. After the war, women were expected to go back to being homemakers, but Joanne instead received her Masters Degree and began a PhD program. She decided to focus on tropical cumulous clouds, even though at the time no one thought that clouds affected the weather-they thought they were just a byproduct. Though the scientific establishment--mostly men--tried to stop her at every turn, her stubborn determination prevailed. She was the first woman in the United States to receive her PhD in meteorology, and her discoveries still affect how we think about clouds and the weather today!--