I attempt here—in an abbreviated manner, naming only a few of the many involved—to extend my deep appreciation to those individuals who have been in truth responsible for much of the “visionary foresight” and “pioneering information technology” mentioned in the Cleveland Abbe Award I received at the American Meteorological Society’s 2008 annual meeting. (See: )
- Thanks to those leaders who—at NSF, NOAA, and key universities, in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s—viewed upcoming changes in the National Weather Service and the computing industry as opportunities for improving the use of atmospheric data in education and research. I highlight the foresight of Dick Greenfield, Doug Sargeant, and Verner Suomi, among others.
- Thanks those who served on Unidata’s Steering and Policy Committees, lending expert guidance to the shaping of a program whose basic tenets, especially in the early stages, were shifting almost at the rate of Moore’s law. I highlight the leadership of John Dutton, Bob Fox and Otis Brown.
- Thanks to superiors and peers at UCAR who guided my maturation as a director, helping me exploit the wisdom in the aforementioned committees and overcome much naïveté! I highlight Stan Ruttenberg for investing initial trust in me as Unidata’s first director, and Bill Curtis for teaching leadership by example.
- Thanks to consultant Chris Cooper, who was instrumental in Unidata’s early and important decision to become Internet-centered. (This in turn encouraged meteorology departments to be among the first in the nation to have Internet connectivity.)
- Thanks to the developers of McIDAS and VisAD at UW-Madison (notably Tom Whittaker and Bill Hibbard); to the developer of GEMPAK, Mary DesJardins, and others at NASA (notably, Franco Einaudi and Louie Uccellini) who supported her work; and to many others (including Dan Vietor, Ernie Agee, Harry Edmon, Steve Hankin, James Gallagher, and Charlie Zender), whose work has enriched or complemented Unidata’s software suite.
- Thanks to all of you whose creativity has truly transformed the teaching of meteorology and even the dissemination of weather information (on the Web). As there are far too many of you to name, or even to highlight, I’ll mention collectively the members of the Users Committee, plus Russ DeSouza and Jim Moore because their departures were so untimely.
- Thanks most profoundly to members of the Unidata staff, who translated into reality whatever vision I may have offered. I’ll not name names except for Glenn Davis, noting that his remarkable instinct for design (manifest in netCDF and LDM) continues to inform advances reported at the AMS meeting, almost 10 years after his death.
Dave Fulker, 31 January 2008
