Joanne Simpson

Joanne Simpson, born Joanne Gerould, was an American meteorologist, born in 1923 in Boston, Massachusetts, and died in 2010 in Washington, D.C. In 1949 she became the first woman in the United States to earn a doctorate in meteorology, and her research on tropical meteorology covered hot towers, hurricanes, trade winds and air-sea interaction. She helped develop the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission for NASA, where she became the agency's lead weather researcher, and in 1989 she became the first woman to serve as president of the American Meteorological Society.