Miles Aylmer Fulton Barnett

Miles Aylmer Fulton Barnett (30 April 1901 – 27 March 1979) was a New Zealand meteorologist and physicist. Born in New Zealand, he obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. He worked there on the propagation of radio waves and on the ionosphere. Later, he returned to New Zealand, where he helped with the development of the Meteorological Service—becoming its director in 1939, just before the start of World War II. After the War, he participated in the transition between the International Meteorological Organization (IMO) and the new United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Biography Miles Aylmer Fulton Barnett was born on 30 April 1901 in Dunedin, New Zealand, the son of surgeon Louis Barnett and Mabel Violet Fulton. His brother was RAF Air Chief Marshall Denis Barnett.

Education Barnett attended school in Christchurch, before entering the University of Otago, where he gained many scholarships in mathematics. In 1924, he graduated with an M.Sc. in Mathematics and Physics, writing a thesis about the equipment used by Professor Robert Jack in his experimental radio broadcasts of 1921 and 1922.

Barnett started his Ph.D. at Clare College, Cambridge, in 1924. In the Cavendish Laboratory, Professor Ernest Rutherford assigned him the study of the propagation of radio waves, through what became known later as the ionosphere, under the supervision of Edward Appleton. He was awarded the diploma in 1927 and elected a Fellow of the Institute of Physics in 1929. In 1948, he was made an Officer of the U.S. Legion of Merit.

In 1947, Barnett was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, and became its president in 1964.