Dr. John C. Calhoun was one of the early pioneers and contributors to UCAR/NCAR development. Calhoun became acquainted with UCAR and a plan for developing a national program (the “Blue Book”) while at Texas A&M University in an administrative role. Although Calhoun did not have a background in the atmospheric sciences, he brought valuable institutional perspective, experience in program development and organizational management to the table.

In this interview I.M. Pei, chief architect of the Mesa Laboratory and the Fleischmann Building, speaks passionately about his inspirations; the placement of the structures and the relationship between building and setting; the design process, down to the selection of materials; and how the Mesa Laboratory marked a very important turning point in his career.

Copyright Information: Copyright University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Harriet B. Crowe, born Harriet Barker in 1938, was raised in Mt. Cisco, New York. She was the first member of her family to attend college, a significant achievement given that neither her parents nor their siblings had the opportunity to pursue higher education. Crowe initially attended Michigan State University in 1956 with the intention of studying nursing, a decision influenced by her high school counselor who discouraged her from pursuing her original ambition of becoming a doctor.

Topics include: how he came to be involved in meteorology; education; time in the Navy; work at MIT; American Meteorological Society; radio casting; industrial meteorology; terms as president-elect, president and past president of AMS; changes technology made to meteorology; forecasting; Center for Operational Meteorological Education and Training (COMET); UCAR; Jim Mahoney; blending meteorology with other sciences; China; Harry Geise; weather modification; Ken Spengler; NCAR.

Oral history interview with Robert Fleagle, 1990. 

Daniel F. Rex was born on December 4, 1916, in Wichita, Kansas. His father, a physician, passed away when Rex was only six months old, leading him to be raised by his mother and maternal grandparents. His grandfather, Lloyd Farrell, a telegrapher and pioneer in Wichita, played a significant role in his upbringing and served as a father figure. Rex's early life was marked by adventure and responsibility, including a trip to Yucatan at the age of fourteen to buy 1100 head of cattle.

Oral history interview with Judy Green, 2015. Interviewed by Kathleen Legg. Forms part of the UCAR/NCAR Oral History Collection. Judy Green, long time telecommunications assistant at NCAR, shares her unique perspective of NCAR, its people and culture. Green discusses her early career as a telephone operator at Mountain Bell in Cheyenne, Wyoming and how her and her family came to NCAR. Green talks about her experience with the various telephone systems at NCAR over the years, including the old “cord board”, the short lived Harris system, the Rolm system and Voice Over IP (VoIP).

Topics include: Mesa Lab site; time on Boulder City Council; time in Climax; Boulder's open space policy; Walter Orr Roberts; Mesa Lab construction; I.M. Pei; fund raising; HAO; Mesa Lab design; computers; roof leaks; Aspen Institute; music; the humanities and science.

Copyright Information: Copyright University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Discussion with Mary Haley, David (Dave) Brown, and Dennis Shea about the development and use of NCAR Command Language (NCL). NCL, produced by the Computational and Information Systems Laboratory (CISL) and is a free interpreted language designed specifically for scientific data processing and visualization. Topics included in this discussion also include: NCAR Graphics, netCDF, GRIB, Fortran, C, Climate and Global Dynamics Laboratory, Community Climate Model, NCL workshops, PyNIO, PyNGL, MATLAB, NumPy, xarray, R, and Python.

In this interview Walter Orr Roberts discusses the war time (World War II) and working in isolation at the observatory in the mining community of Climax, Colorado. He talks about observing the Sun’s corona, using the chronograph and doing special cosmic ray work with gold. The observatory was eventually incorporated jointly with the University of Colorado. Roberts wanted to get the Climax Company’s permission to name the observatory the Climax Solar Observatory, but timing was not on his side. Jack Evans and Roberts decided on a different name, the High Altitude Observatory (HAO).