On November 19, 1912, Robert Homer Simpson was born in Corpus Christi, Texas. A pioneer in the field of hurricane science, Bob Simpson carried out research missions “piggybacked” on Air Force reconnaissance flights in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He wrote the plan establishing the National Hurricane Research Project in 1955 and became its first director. He was later the Weather Bureau’s Deputy Director of Research for Severe Storms and the inaugural director for Project STORMFURY, the U. S. Government’s twenty-year long experiment testing the hypothesis that seeding tropical cyclones with silver iodide would reduce their maximum wind speeds.
In 1968, he was named director of the National Hurricane Center. He reorganized the Center so that it was separate from the Miami National Weather Service Office, he established its small research section, and expanded its satellite analysis branch. He ensured the Center remained current in computer and technological advances and was critical in raising the warnings about the severity of Hurricane Camille. He also worked with his friend Herb Saffir in formulating a five-level scale for ranking hurricanes that became known as the Saffir-Simpson Wind Scale.
He retired from Government service in 1974 and took a faculty position at the University of Virginia. He and his wife Joanne established Simpson Weather Associates, a private consulting firm. Bob now lives in Washington, D.C. and is eagerly awaiting the publication of his autobiography sometime next year.