Background
Austin was born in Dunedin, New Zealand.
Austin was born in Dunedin, New Zealand.
He graduated from Otago University in 1935 and obtained a master"s degree in mathematics from the University of New Zealand in 1936 and the Doctor of Science in meteorology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1941.
He was notable for his pioneering modeling of the meteorology of air pollution, especially that of smokestack particulates. He is also notable as the doctoral advisor of the pioneer of chaos theory and early practitioner of numerical weather prediction, Edward Norton Lorenz. Under Sverre Petterssen, the thesis he produced was entitled Fronts and Frontogenesis in Relation to Vorticity.
He became a naturalized United States citizen in 1946.
Austin was a professor of meteorology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1941-1983. He was also the first director of Massachusetts Institute of Technology"s Summer Session, holding that position from 1956-1983.
As a forecaster during World World War II, he served as a consultant to the United States Army Air Force weather service in Europe. His forecasting work was a factor in the decisions on the final bombardment of Cherbourg, France and the Doctorate-Day landing of airborne troops, as well as the movement of advance mobile weather stations across northern France.
He consulted for major power companies in the nation"s first efforts to control pollution from energy-generating plants.
He also brought meteorology into homes in eastern Massachusetts. On June 9, 1948, he launched a nightly weather forecast on WBZ-television, the first television program broadcast live from Boston. He was a former secretary of the American Meteorological Society.
As a resident of Concord, Massachusetts, James M. Austin died on November 26, aged 85.
American Academy of Arts and Sciences.