James Murdoch Austin

James Murdoch Austin (May 25, 1915 – November 26, 2000) was a New Zealand-American meteorologist. He was notable for his pioneering modeling of the meteorology of air pollution, especially that of smokestack particulates. He is also notable as the doctoral advisor of the pioneer of chaos theory and early practitioner of numerical weather prediction, Edward Norton Lorenz.

Early life and education Austin was born in Dunedin, New Zealand. He graduated from Otago University in 1935 and obtained a master's degree in mathematics from the University of New Zealand in 1936 and the ScD in meteorology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1941. Under Sverre Petterssen, the thesis he produced was entitled Fronts and Frontogenesis in Relation to Vorticity. He became a naturalized US citizen in 1946.

Personal life Austin was married for 59 years to Dr. Pauline Morrow Austin, who for years directed the MIT Weather Radar project. Their two daughters are Doris A. Price of Annapolis, Maryland, and Carol T. West of Gainesville, Florida. In 1946, President Harry S. Truman awarded him the Medal of Freedom for his civilian wartime service. He was a former secretary of the American Meteorological Society.

Death As a resident of Concord, Massachusetts, James M. Austin died on November 26, 2000, aged 85.

Books by Austin Bernhard Haurwitz and James M. Austin, Climatology, New York, London, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1944.