Schaefer, Vincent J.

Schaefer, Vincent J. (Joseph) (1906–93) meteorologist; born in Schenectady, N.Y. He left high school at age 16 to help support his family, and enrolled in the General Electric (GE) Apprentice School (1922–26). He worked in the GE Research Lab Instrument Shop where he so impressed Irving Langmuir that he became his research assistant (1933–38) and then an associate of Langmuir's (1938–54). For the U.S. government during World War II they designed an efficient smoke generator to screen military operations, improved the filter for gas masks, and tackled the problem of icing on airplane wings. In the course of this project, in 1946, Schaefer caused a cloud to "snow" by seeding it with dry ice from an airplane. This resulted in the five-year government sponsored "Project Cirrus" at GE to study cloud seeding. In 1952 Schaefer became director of research at Munitalp Foundation and in 1959 he joined the faculty at the State University of New York: Albany, where he was instrumental in establishing the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center of which he was the first director (1960–76). He retired in 1976 after receiving two honorary degrees, including Sc.D. from Notre Dame University (1948), and several awards including the prestigious Robert M. Losey Award (1953). He wrote more than 270 scientific papers and was coauthor of Field Guide to the Atmosphere (1983).