Atmospheric Scientist Bernard Vonnegut Dies at 82

Bernard Vonnegut, a University scientist recognized internationally for his discovery of cloud-seeding techniques and his research into the nature of thunderstorms, died Friday, April 15, at St. Peter's Hospice in Albany. He was 82.

During over 50 years of research into nature's mysteries, he increased our understanding of clouds, tornadoes, and atmospheric electricity, especially lightning. In 1946, his discovery of the efficacy of silver iodide as a cloud-seeding agent transformed the science of rainfall modification. For the last four decades, a major focus of his research had been the question of how a billowy cloud can became a high-voltage generator (lightning) spewing out sparks that can stretch many miles across the skies.

While he was best known for his cloud-seeding discovery and his lightning research, he was also known for his wide-ranging curiosity and ingenuity. While he had formally retired from the University in 1985, he continued to be a daily presence on campus and to pursue his investigations until virtually the final days of his life. He held over two dozen patents and produced a far larger number of truly ingenious solutions to instrumentation problems. He published prolifically and was an enthusiastic teacher. Students were frequently listed as co-authors of his publications.

Vonnegut was named a distinguished professor, the highest rank in the State University of New York system, in 1983. He had joined the University faculty in 1967.

In his investigations of thunderstorms and lightning, Vonnegut employed the data and tools used by many atmospheric scientists, such as weather balloons with instruments that track atmospheric phenomena. But he also employed more novel approaches. In 1982, photographs of lightning were taken from the Space Shuttle Columbia as part of any experiment carried out on behalf of Vonnegut and two other scientists. The photographs showed lightning stretching across surprisingly vast stretches of sky - 40 or 50 miles at least.

In 1986, Vonnegut and Charles Moore of New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro, N.M., used an electrified wire stretched 1.2 miles across a New Mexico canyon to create "upside-down" thunderclouds. Those experiments, said Vonnegut and Moore, suggested that small charges present in the atmosphere during the formation of a thundercloud may trigger the electrification of the cloud and that the kind of charge that is present, negative or positive, determines the cloud's polarity.

In 1954, Vonnegut first proposed his "convection" theory of cloud electrification, which holds that strong winds blowing up and down in clouds are primarily responsible for cloud electrification and that the resulting lightning plays an important role in the formation of rain. He often noted that his theory was regarded as a "kind of heresy" in the field, but that did not deter his investigations.

He was born Aug. 29, 1914, in Indianapolis, Ind., and earned his bachelor's degree in chemistry and his doctorate in physical chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Before he joined the faculty at Albany, he worked at Arthur D. Little in Cambridge, Mass., and at the General Electric Research Laboratory in Schenectady. Mary Fiess

What Kinds of Scholarships are Most Appropriate for this University Center?

With a fine national ranking by the Graham/Diamond study in hand, a doctoral program review in progress, a new President at the helm, and other senior administrative appointments soon to be made - this is an excellent time for the University at Albany to ask itself fundamental academic questions. We can mull them over in the optimistic spirit that we're on the academic map, on the move, and headed for even higher ground. I offer my answer to the fundamental question above to stimulate discussion, knowing that others may think I am way off the mark, for their fields or by their values.

Let me say immediately, that I respect the right we all have to pursue any kind of scholarship we want. I don't propose to infringe this academic freedom entirely. But I do think that some kinds of scholarship are more nurturing for the University and its students, and ought to be supported preferentially (not exclusively) by distribution of our University resources.

I think the most appropriate kinds of scholarship for this University at this time are work that builds the University's academic reputation in the minds of scholars elsewhere, and work that sends well-prepared students out the door.

The University's reputation can be built most effectively and permanently by work that advances disciplines or stakes important claims in fresh, interdisciplinary areas. It is not built so effectively by mere practice of more or less familiar approaches to more or less standard problems. The kind of scholarship we need is the kind that writers of textbooks feel they must include in their next editions, or that teachers of graduate seminars elsewhere feel they must include in their reading lists. It is scholarship that adds to, or sharpens, or tosses out, conceptual or analytical tools in our scholarly toolboxes. It is seminal work. This kind of scholarship may or may not bring in large amounts of external funding, and it may or may not create the kinds of headlines that build the University's reputation in the minds of legislators and the public-at-large. It is fundamental work that, in the end, undergirds all the wonderful products of more applied research. In the creative arts, I have less idea, but I suppose we need creation that is conspicuous for its fresh wit or wisdom, and is beautiful in some way.

To send well-prepared students out the door, we need scholarship that builds stronger minds, communication skills, and analytical expertise, not just in our graduate students, but in undergraduates as well. What kinds of scholarship are not appropriate to these goals? Scholarship where the students involved are mostly technicians, learning procedures but not learning to think or communicate powerfully. Scholarship where the participants cannot see the woods for the trees. Scholarship where the "dissertation topic" is indistinguishable from what the graduate will do next, in their first job in a non-research career. A University Center should not just be a trade-school, even in its units devoted to professional preparation.

Are any of these ideas broadly appealing to faculty members or to administrators? Can any of them be used in practical, fair ways, to redirect resources? Can any of them influence the research directions chosen by individual faculty members? And how do we deal with the conflict between needing to do "appropriate" scholarship and knowing that "less appropriate" scholarship is often what pays off best in grant money, or political support?

Winthrop Means
Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences