Alexander McAdie

Born in New York City in 1863, Alexander George McAdie studied at Harvard and joined the Army Signal Service while still in college, linking his career early to the government weather work that later became the U.S. Weather Bureau. He built a reputation as a scientist and writer with a strong interest in the atmosphere, especially meteorology and atmospheric electricity.

From 1903 to 1913 he led the U.S. Weather Bureau office in San Francisco. He later returned to Harvard as professor of meteorology and also served as director of the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory, where he remained an important figure in American weather science until his retirement in 1931.

McAdie died in 1943. He is remembered as part of the generation that turned weather observation into a more organized modern science, while also helping connect university research, public forecasting, and field observation.