David Atlas

Early life

David Atlas, born in Brooklyn to Polish and Russian immigrants, completed his early education there before attending City College of New York. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army Air Corps, focusing on radar development and precipitation echoes. Afterward, he spent 18 years in the Air Force at Cambridge Research Laboratories, leading a weather radar team while earning advanced degrees. His research applied the Doppler Effect to wind measurement.

Career

From 1966 to 1972 Atlas was professor of meteorology at the University of Chicago. He then served as director of the atmospheric technologies division at NCAR in Boulder, Colorado, from 1972 to 1976; his team's work contributed to the development of the NEXRAD Doppler weather radar network. In 1977 he formed the Laboratory for Atmospheric Sciences at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, which produced instruments for weather satellites studying the atmosphere, oceans, and cryosphere.

He officially retired in 1984 but remained active in radar meteorology research, working at Goddard until recently. He was a fellow of the American Geophysical Society, the Royal Meteorological Society, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Meteorological Society, serving as its president in 1975. His awards include the Symons Gold Medal (1988), the Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal (1996), and the Dennis J. Picard Medal (2004).