Margaret Smagorinsky

Margaret Smagorinsky
Born
Margaret F Knoepfel

(1915-12-23)December 23, 1915
New York City, New York, United States
DiedNovember 14, 2011(2011-11-14) (aged 95)
Hillsborough, New Jersey, United States
EducationBrooklyn College
University of Virginia
New York University
SpouseJoseph Smagorinsky
Scientific career
FieldsMeteorology
WorkplacesRailroad Retirement Board
Princeton University

Margaret Smagorinsky (23 December 1915 – 14 November 2011) was an American statistician, computer programmer, and weather technologist. She was the first female statistician hired by the United States Weather Bureau.

Early life

Smagorinsky was born in Brooklyn, New York, as the second of four daughters of Anne and George Knoepfel. She attended Bay Ridge High School in Brooklyn.

Smagorinsky was the first member of her family to attend college when she attended Brooklyn College. She graduated at age 19 with a degree in mathematics, and taught school in a one-room schoolhouse in Ashland, New York, for four years.

Statistics career

Smagorinsky took the civil service exam for a statistical clerk in the US. She was offered a job at the Railroad Retirement Board in Washington, D.C., where she worked as a statistician processing paperwork for employees looking to enter the civil service.

At age 26, Smagorinsky joined the Weather Bureau, where she was the first woman statistician. After being sent to New York University for additional coursework, she met Joseph Smagorinsky in a graduate statistics course. He was 8 years her junior, and they married on May 29, 1948.

Smagorinsky had five children: Anne, Peter, Teresa, Julia, and Frederick. She left full-time government employment after her first child was born in 1951.[citation needed]

Smagorinsky, in supporting her husband's work, processed data and programmed the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer). In April 1950, a group of meteorologists at New Jersey's Institute for Advanced Study successfully produced the first weather forecast using the ENIAC and numerical prediction techniques. Smagorinsky is cited as a programmer of computers for 5-day weather forecast models created by the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Publications

References

  1. ↑ Witman, Sarah (2017-06-16). "The Unheralded Contributions of Klara Dan von Neumann". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2023-03-05.
  2. 1 2 "Obituary information for Margaret Smagorinsky". The Mather-Hodge Funeral Home.
  3. 1 2 Harper, Kristine; Doel, Ronald (2006-01-02). "Transcript of Oral History Interview of Margaret Smagorinsky". American Meteorological Society University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.
  4. ↑ "Weather Bureau's 1st girl statistician hails from Boro". The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 1943-07-11. p. 7. Retrieved 2022-12-17.
  5. ↑ Koertge, Noretta, ed. (2008). New dictionary of scientific biography. Vol. 6. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons/Thomson Gale. p. 470. ISBN 978-0-684-31320-7.
  6. 1 2 Smagorinsky, Joseph (1983-01-01), "The Beginnings of Numerical Weather Prediction and General Circulation Modeling: Early Recollections", in Saltzman, Barry (ed.), Advances in Geophysics, Theory of Climate, vol. 25, Elsevier, pp. 3–37, Bibcode:1983AdGeo..25....3S, doi:10.1016/S0065-2687(08)60170-3, ISBN 978-0-12-018825-3, retrieved 2023-03-05
  7. ↑ Nebeker, Frederik (1995). Calculating the Weather: Meteorology in the 20th Century. Elsevier. p. 137. ISBN 978-0-08-052841-0.
  8. ↑ Dyson, George (2012). Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe. Pantheon Books. p. 166. ISBN 978-0-375-42277-5.