Braham, Roscoe R.

Meteorologist (cloud physics, weather modification, thunderstorms).

From the description of Oral history interview with Roscoe Braham, 1987 January 13. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 78261312

Roscoe R. Braham Jr., a pioneering meteorologist, educator, noted expert in cloud precipitation physics, and visiting professor at NC State.

He earned a bachelor's degree in geology in 1942, Braham was trained as a pilot in the U.S. Army Air Corps and served as a weather officer until his discharge in 1946. Braham completed his master's and doctoral degrees at the University of Chicago, joining the University of Chicago staff in 1952 as a research meteorologist and retiring in 1991 after thirty-seven years - twenty-six of them as a full professor.

During his fifty-year career, he served as a research meteorologist at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology and at the University of Chicago, as professor of physics and founding director of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Arizona, as professor of meteorology at the University of Chicago, and as visiting scientist at NC State.

As a scholar, Braham helped lead the 1940s Thunderstorm Project--the first large-scale meteorological study undertaken-and co-wrote The Thunderstorm, which is required reading for meteorologists. He is also credited with the discovery of cell organization of thunderstorms and the coalescence-freezing mechanism of precipitation formation in natural clouds.

Braham has published more than eighty scientific reports, books, and monographs during his academic career. Braham received an honorary Doctor of Sciences degree from Chancellor James L. Oblinger during NC State's fall commencement on December 20, 2006.

Braham joined the American Meteorological Society in 1945 and served as its president in 1988, helping the society in its quest to improve television weather forecasting.

He received the 1950 Losey Atmospheric Sciences Award from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Department of Commerce Silver Medal for his work on the Thunderstorm Project, a multi-agency research program ordered by Congress to investigate how airplanes could be made safer in thunderstorms.

Braham and his wife, Mary Ann, are life members of the Friends of the Library and established the Edith B. Braham Endowment, which supports the Libraries' meteorology collections in all formats and is named for Braham's mother. Their son, Richard R. Braham, is a professor of forestry and environmental resources at NC State and chaired the University Library Committee in 1988-1989.

From the guide to the Roscoe Braham Papers, 1931-2009, (Special Collections Research Center)