(WTXL) -- Robert Simpson, a meteorologist who helped develop the commonly-used hurricane wind scale bearing his name, died Friday. He was 102 years old.
Simpson earned degrees in physics from Southwestern and Emory universities during the 1930s, and joined the United States Weather Bureau in 1940. Simpson used Air Force reconnaissance missions in the late '40s and '50s to record scientific information in flights through hurricanes. His efforts led to the development of National Hurricane Research Project in 1955. He later received a doctorate degree in meteorology from the University of Chicago.
After becoming deputy director of the National Hurricane Center in 1967, then its director in 1970, Simpson worked with engineer Herbert Saffir to develop a categorized scale of ranking the intensity of hurricanes based on the effects of wind and storm surge. The Saffir-Simpson scale went into regular use in 1973.
Simpson's wife, Joanne, who was also a meteorologist, died in 2010.
