Directorship under Richard M. Goody: 1958–1971

Abstract

Richard M. Goody, whose portrait is shown in figure 142, had decided to join the department of Engineering and Applied Physics and an agreement was made by the corporation that the Observatory become a part of that division. After consultation with the primary benefactors of the Observatory’s endowment, the university allowed funds to be transferred for use in Cambridge under continued responsibility of the director. As Goody saw it, “My task had two parts: first, to consolidate atmospheric science as a proper activity for the University; and second, to incorporate the Observatory into that activity in a constructive way, if at all possible.” He concluded early “that there never would be support for a traditional Department ofMeteorology or even a broader Department of Atmospheric Sciences with the competition of nearby MIT. The only worthwhile effort would be to build something complementary to MIT that would be able to bring into the atmospheric sciences some of the excellent graduate students at Harvard who, otherwise, would not know anything about the field.”