NOAA Champions

Dr. Robert White

First NOAA administrator

Dr. Robert White became NOAA’s first administrator in 1972, following visionary leadership as the first Federal Coordinator of Meteorology and chief of the U.S. Weather Bureau. From the outset, Dr. White set a high bar for federal service by pioneering an approach to meteorology that linked it to observing, understanding, and interacting with the natural environment. He advocated for better weather predictions and improving the global weather observing system through satellites, and he is widely recognized as an early proponent of developing a capability to observe and understand global climate change.

Rear Adm. Evelyn Fields

First woman and African American to lead the NOAA Corps

Rear Adm. Evelyn Fields was not afraid to take risks – a characteristic that brought her a few “firsts” in her NOAA Corps career, including becoming the first woman and the first African American to hold the position of director of the NOAA Corps and Office of Marine and Aviation Operations. As a new graduate in 1972 with a degree in math, Fields’ first career position was as a cartographer at NOAA’s Atlantic Marine Center in Norfolk, Virginia, where she worked on nautical charting surveys. She was there less than a year when the NOAA Corps began recruiting women as commissioned officers. Fields became the first African American female to join the Corps. By 1989, she was the first woman to command a NOAA ship. In 1999, she reached the rank of rear admiral and took the helm as NOAA Corps Director.

Dr. David Simonds Johnson

Pioneer in satellite technology

Weather forecasting took off in a big way in the 1950s thanks in large part to Dr. David Simonds Johnson, a meteorologist who played a key role in creating the nation’s weather satellite program. Dr. Johnson was the founding director of the National Weather Satellite Center and directed its successors, the National Environmental Satellite Service and the NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS). In 1976, he became NOAA’s first assistant administrator for satellites and data. During his tenure, NOAA launched two series of weather satellites that provided observations of the entire earth twice daily to weather services around the world.

Dr. Nancy Foster

Leader and mentor

Dr. Nancy Foster dedicated 23 years of outstanding service to NOAA, leaving a remarkable imprint on the agency. She is known for her mentorship – particularly of women in science – and as a champion of diversity. A marine biologist, Foster began her NOAA career in 1977 with the Office of Research and Development, followed by nine years leading the National Marine Sanctuary Program and the National Estuarine Research Reserve Program. Much of the success of the sanctuary program is attributable to her tenure in its early years and through her long-term support and advocacy. From 1986 to 1993, she was director of the NOAA Fisheries Office of Protected Resources. She also created the NOAA Habitat Restoration Center and the NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office. She was a key player in developing the Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Act, which established the Marine Mammal Stranding Network. Dr. Foster helped lead NOAA Fisheries until 1997, where she helped to create a more efficient, responsive, and scientifically rigorous agency, before leading the National Ocean Service.

Dr. Elbert W. “Joe” Friday

Catalyst for National Weather Service modernization

Dr. Elbert W. “Joe” Friday was appointed the deputy director of the National Weather Service in 1981, and the director in 1988. In his role as deputy, Friday was responsible for developing a plan to modernize the agency, a plan that he later implemented as director. The modernization and associated restructuring, or MAR, vastly modernized the agency’s observational infrastructure, radically changed the NWS field office structure and staffed them with degreed meteorologists and hyrologists with advanced training in the new systems to ensure more rapid detection of storms and deliver timely forecasts and warnings to the public. The modernization Dr. Friday oversaw significantly improved weather forecasts and warnings. Dr. Friday served as director of the NWS until 1997; his work to modernize the agency is among his proudest achievements.

Dr. John Knauss

Co-founded the Sea Grant Program

Dr. John Knauss was under secretary for oceans and atmosphere in the Department of Commerce and administrator of NOAA from 1989 to 1993. Through his extensive career in oceanography and marine policy, one of his notable achievements, in collaboration with Senator Claiborne Pell and Dr. Athelstan Spilhaus from Minnesota University, was the development of the Sea Grant program: “The Sea Grant idea was first proposed by Athelstan Spilhaus at a 1963 fisheries conference. It found fertile soil in Rhode Island. where we believed we were already doing much of what Spilhaus was proposing,” said Knauss in a 2000 issue of Maritimes. “The Sea Grant Act was passed in 1966. URI received one of the first grants in 1968 and became one of the first four Sea Grant Colleges in 1972.” And thus was established an academic/industry/government partnership in recognition that marine resources were an untapped asset for energy, development, and food resources.

Rear Adm. Harley Nygren

First and longest-serving NOAA Corps director

After enlisting in the U.S. Naval Reserves in 1942, Rear Adm. Harley Nygren attended and graduated from the University of Washington and was commissioned as an ensign in the Naval Reserve. Nygren received a commission as an ensign in the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey (USC&GS) in 1948. His ship assignments included the USC&GS Ships Explorer, Hodgson, Pathfinder, Pioneer, Discoverer, and Surveyor, serving as the commanding officer on the Surveyor. He was promoted to rear admiral in 1968 and became the associate administrator of the Environmental Science Services Administration, where he was instrumental in organizing NOAA. He was appointed as the director of the newly formed NOAA Corps in February 1971. Nygren retired from the NOAA Corps in 1981, having served as the NOAA Corps director for a decade.

Dr. Susan Solomon

Solved the mystery of the hole in the ozone layer

When a hole appeared in the ozone layer over Antarctica in the 1980s, Dr. Susan Solomon and her colleagues at the former NOAA Aeronomy Laboratory wanted to know why. To solve the mystery, Solomon led two U.S. scientific expeditions to the frozen continent in 1986 and 1987. Her teams’ observations supported her theory that chemical reactions of chlorine and icy clouds in the cold, polar stratosphere could be responsible for ozone losses during the Antarctic springtime. Through her career, Solomon received many distinguished awards for her work, including the 1999 National Medal of Science, the highest scientific award given by the U.S. government. She also shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 as a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Dr. Alexander “Sandy” MacDonald

Invented Science on a Sphere®

Dr. Alexander “Sandy” MacDonald began working for NOAA in the National Weather Service Western Region Headquarters in Salt Lake City in 1973. When the Program for Regional Observing and Forecasting was established in 1980, MacDonald led its advanced weather prediction development team. He subsequently was the first director of NOAA’s Forecast Systems Laboratory, and also the first director of its Earth System Research Laboratory. From 2006 to the end of 2012, he was the deputy assistant administrator of NOAA Research. He is the inventor of Science On a Sphere®, a display system that is in hundreds of museums and other institutions around the world, educating people of all ages about Earth science.

Dr. Margaret Davidson

Visionary in coastal management and sustainability

Dr. Margaret Davidson joined NOAA as the founding director of NOAA’s Coastal Services Center, where she created a customer-driven organization that accelerated the use of technology, tools and skills required to make informed coastal economic development and ecosystem management decisions at all levels of government. Before joining NOAA, Davidson was executive director of the South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium from 1983 to 1995. She served as acting director of the Office for Ocean and Coastal Resources Management when that office and CSC merged to form the new Office for Coastal Management. Davidson also took on the challenge of establishing a position to lead NOAA’s response to coastal inundation and resilience.

Dr. Usha Varanasi

First female director of a fisheries field office

Dr. Usha Varanasi was the science and research director of NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center from 1994 until 2010. As the first woman to lead a fisheries field office, she dedicated much of her 35 years of service in NOAA to addressing critical biological questions and improving public policy decisions. Her revolutionary research on marine organism contaminants led to a reduction in damage to fisheries resources and improvements in food safety.