John Mason (meteorologist)

Sir Basil John Mason CB FRS (18 August 1923 – 6 January 2015) was an expert on cloud physics and former Director-General of the Meteorological Office from 1965 to 1983 and Chancellor of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) from 1994 to 1996.

Mason was born in Docking, Norfolk. and educated at Fakenham Grammar School and University College, Nottingham.

He served in the Radar branch of the RAF during the Second World War as a Flight-lieutenant. After being awarded a first class degree in physics by the University of London he was in 1948 appointed lecturer in the postgraduate Department of Meteorology at Imperial College, London. He married Doreen Jones, with whom he had two sons.

He worked at Imperial College from 1948 to 1965, being appointed Professor of Cloud Physics in 1961. His work concerned the physical processes involved in the formation of clouds and the release of rain, snow or hail and led to the Mason Equation, which defines the growth or evaporation of small water droplets.

In the 1960s, he helped to modernise the World Meteorological Organization

From 1965 to 1983 he was Director of the UK Meteorological Office at Bracknell where he also developed theories to explain how electric charge is separated in thunderclouds, ultimately leading to lightning. Mason was elected a Fellow at Imperial College in 1974. His doctoral students included John Latham.

John Mason died in 2015. After his death, the Sir John Mason Academic Trust, was established by his family and is chaired by his son, Professor Nigel Mason OBE, currently Head of the School of Physical Sciences at the University of Kent.

In 1965 he was awarded the Chree Medal and in 1974 the Glazebrook Medal from the Institute of Physics and was President of the Institute from 1976 to 1978.