physics

Pauline Morrow Austin

Pauline Morrow Austin is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Pauline Morrow Austin rather than just read about it. In short: Pauline "Polly" Morrow Austin (December 18, 1916 – August 29, 2011) was an American physicist and meteorologist known for her work on weather radar. Early life and education Austin (nee Pauline Morrow) was born in 1916 in Kingsville, Texas.

Key takeaways

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Reproduce the core statement of Pauline Morrow Austin from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Pauline "Polly" Morrow Austin (December 18, 1916 – August 29, 2011) was an American physicist and meteorologist known for her work on weather radar.

Early life and education Austin (nee Pauline Morrow) was born in 1916 in Kingsville, Texas. She was raised in Mexico and homeschooled for most of her childhood by her parents who were educational missionaries. However, for the sophomore and senior years of high school she attended North Avenue Presbyterian School in Atlanta, Georgia. Austin received a BA in mathematics from Wilson College in 1938 where she was a student of Dorothy Weeks. She then went on to earn an MA from Smith College in 1939 and a PhD in Physics from MIT in 1942. At MIT, Austin was the student and protégé of Julius Stratton, an electrical engineer and later president of MIT. Austin's dissertation was on the theory of propagation of electromagnetic radiation through Earth's atmosphere.

Career Austin began her career in the MIT Radiation Laboratory, where she contributed to the development of Long Range Navigation (LORAN) and radar in World War II. She was praised in the New York Times on January 18, 1942, as one of nine women contributing wartime science and technology. Her work contributed to the then new application of radar to weather. In 1946, she joined the newly formed MIT Weather Radar Project as the expert on electromagnetic theory. In this work she compared radar echoes to the amount of rainfall, improving the use of radar to predict weather patterns. In 1947 she became a founding and only woman member of the American Meteorological Society's Committee on Radar Meteorology. From 1956-1980 she directed the Weather Radar Project. During her time as Director, she taught radar meteorology and advised graduate students in the MIT Department of Meteorology (now part of the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences). Her research focused on the measurement of rain by radar and in 1974 her project deployed a shipborne radar to measure rainfall over the tropical ocean as part of the Global Atmospheric Research Program's Atlantic Tropical Experiment (GATE). From 1953-1955, Austin also worked as a lecturer at Wellesley College.

Personal life Austin met James Murdoch Austin during graduate school at MIT. They wed in 1941 and remained at MIT, where he became a long-time Professor of Meteorology and an early television weather forecaster. Pauline collaborated with him for some of the earliest inclusion of radar observations in television weather reports. They had two daughters together: Doris A. Price of Annapolis, Maryland and Carol T. West of Gainesville, Florida. After her husband's death in 2000, Austin moved to Gainesville, Florida, to be nearer to one of her daughters. Throughout most of her working and retired life, Austin was an avid golfer. In her later years, she volunteered at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

Legacy In 2016, Austin was memorialized with an exhibit in the Green Building at MIT, and in 2017, MIT produced a biographical video highlighting her career as one of the first women to earn a Ph.D. in physics from MIT.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Pauline Morrow Austin

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Pauline Morrow Austin claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Pauline Morrow Austin before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Pauline Morrow Austin ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Pauline Morrow Austin

In research: Pauline Morrow Austin appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Pauline Morrow Austin in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Pauline Morrow Austin is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1916 births, 2011 deaths, 20th-century American physicists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Pauline Morrow Austin outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Pauline Morrow Austin in 20 minutes

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Close the page and write down what Pauline Morrow Austin means in your own words.
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Frequently asked questions

What is Pauline Morrow Austin in simple terms?

Pauline "Polly" Morrow Austin (December 18, 1916 – August 29, 2011) was an American physicist and meteorologist known for her work on weather radar. Early life and education Austin (nee Pauline Morrow) was born in 1916 in Kingsville, Texas.

Why does Pauline Morrow Austin matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Pauline Morrow Austin?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Pauline Morrow Austin.