Norman Phillips
Affiliation
Norman A. Phillips was among the extraordinary team of mathematicians, scientists, engineers and technicians who came to the Institute in 1945 on the invitation of Professor John von Neumann to work on the IAS Electronic Computer Project. Phillips received the 2003 Franklin Medal in Earth Sciences jointly with Joseph Smagorinsky for contributions to the prediction of weather and climate using numerical models, work they pursued at the Institute in the early fifties.
From the Franklin Institute:
A theoretical meteorologist, Norman Phillips was the first to show, with a simple General Circulation model, that weather prediction with numerical models was even feasible. The advent of numerical weather predictions in the 1950s also signaled the transformation of weather forecasting from a highly individualistic effort to one in which teams of experts developed complex computer programs, eventually for high-speed computers. With Joseph Smagorinsky, he produced seminal and pioneering studies that led to the first computer models of weather and climate, as well as to an understanding of the general circulation of the atmosphere, including the transports of heat and moisture that determine the Earth's climate.
