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.

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.

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.

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).

Oral history interview with Karyn Sawyer, 2015. Interviewed by Richard Anthes. Forms part of the UCAR/NCAR Oral History Collection. Long-time UCAR/NCAR staff member Karyn Sawyer reflects on her decades-long career at the organization, including how she came to work for NCAR, field projects, international scientific cooperation, UCAR/NCAR administration, and her management style.

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.

Nelder Medrud begins the interview with a discussion of his life history, education and research prior to arriving at NCAR. Medrud became acquainted with NCAR through Phil Thompson and Henry van de Boogaard while at the University of Stockholm, Sweden in the early 1960s. In the Air Force, Medrud’s specialty was applied climatology and a position opened up at NCAR focusing on applications to societal problems. The immediate focus of Medrud’s work at NCAR was on the matter of the consequences of hail to society.

Oral history interview with Peggy LeMone, 2001. Interviewed by Diane Rabson and Nicolle Alida. Interview is about the Electra aircraft. 

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

Oral history interview with Rene Munoz, 2004. Interviewed by Stuart Leslie. Topics include: Tour of the Mesa Lab and Mesa Lab’s construction; experiments done at NCAR; bush hammering; Damon room; Margaret Thatcher visit; supercomputing.

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.