Robert M. (Bob) Cunningham (July 1, 1919 – April 15, 2008) was an American
cloud physicist. He specialized in the study of
fog
Fog is a visible aerosol consisting of tiny water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the air at or near the Earth's surface. Reprint from Fog can be considered a type of low-lying cloud usually resembling stratus, and is heavily influ ...
, running a weather research station on
Kent Island in the
Bay of Fundy
The Bay of Fundy (french: Baie de Fundy) is a bay between the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, with a small portion touching the U.S. state of Maine. It is an arm of the Gulf of Maine. Its extremely high tidal range is the hi ...
for over 60 years.
Cunningham was born in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. He attended
Shady Hill School
Shady Hill School is an independent, co-educational day school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1915, Shady Hill serves students in pre-kindergarten (called 'Beginners' by the school) through 8th grade. The school has an enrollment of appr ...
and
the Cambridge School of Weston, where he built his first weather station.
He first went to
Bowdoin College
Bowdoin College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Brunswick, Maine. When Bowdoin was chartered in 1794, Maine was still a part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The college offers 34 majors and 36 minors, as well as several joint eng ...
's Scientific Research Station on Kent Island as a high school student in the summer of 1937. He set up a weather station and began collecting samples of fog water which were later subjected to chemical analysis.
His first scientific paper on the subject was published in 1941.
Cunningham attended the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1938 to 1942 and worked on an
aircraft icing
Atmospheric icing occurs in the atmosphere when water droplets suspended in air freeze on objects they come in contact with. It is not the same as freezing rain, which is caused directly by precipitation. Icing conditions can be particularly dan ...
research team in the university's
meteorology department during World War Two.
He joined MIT's Weather Radar Research project as a graduate student when it was founded in 1946. He acted as the airborne observer in a program that involved comparing radar observations with those taken from airplanes during storms. His findings helped to establish that the "
bright band" observed on radar displays was an artifact of melting snowflakes.
Cunningham earned a
PhD PHD or PhD may refer to:
* Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification
Entertainment
* '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series
* ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic
* Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group
** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...
from MIT in 1952 and in 1953 became head of airborne cloud physics research at the
Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories.
After retiring in 1979 Cunningham spent several years with the
World Meteorological Organization as field director of an international research project on precipitation enhancement.
Throughout his career and until his death in 2008 Cunningham retained responsibility for the Kent Island weather station he had first set up in 1937. Observations were taken during the summer by staff and students of the Bowdoin College scientific station, and during the rest of the year by the station's resident warden.
Cunningham contributed his analysis of decades of daily fog samples from Kent Island to research published in the 1980s on the effect of acid rain on forests.
Cunningham lived in Lincoln, Massachusetts from 1948 until his death. He married Claire Steinhardt, an Austrian-born chemist and high school teacher, in 1945. They had three sons, one of whom is the photographer
Peter Cunningham.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cunningham, , Robert M
1919 births
2008 deaths
People from Cambridge, Massachusetts
American meteorologists
Shady Hill School alumni
Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni