Chester Newton: Remembrances of his Early Years in Meteorology

Information contained in a 2-hour recorded interview with Chester Newton in 1990 revealed his early experiences and education at the Institute of Meteorology, University of Chicago (1946–1951), and at the International Meteorological Institute (IMI) at Stockholm University (1951–1953). The first part of this history paper is a narrative based on Newton’s remembrances of the education, not only for himself, but for the collection of multi-talented graduate students in the two institutes. He pays special attention to Rossby’s philosophy of teaching and research. The second part of the paper focuses on Rossby’s continued guidance of Newton between 1953 and the year of Rossby’s death, 1957. The discussion of this guidance is based on a set of documents sent by Newton to the author in the early-mid 1990s. Newton’s masterful way of describing the milieu where he budded as a young scientist gives the listener a vicarious sense of being a student under Rossby and the coterie of like-minded professors and visitors at “Rossby’s institutes”.