THOMAS F. MALONE

THOMAS F. MALONE, a renowned scientist who warned about the dangers of global warming, and who received an honorary degree in 2007, died July 6, 2013. He was 96. An honors graduate of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, he earned his PhD at MIT in 1946. Editor of the Compendium of Meteorology published in 1951, a prominent member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Meteorology, and Staff Planning Director for the University Committee on Meteorology, he was an influential voice in the expansion of research and education in this field during the second half of the 20th century. He served simultaneously as president of the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union and was later president of Sigma Xi. An adviser to the Kennedy administration, he was a catalyst in an international collaborative program by national weather services and scientific organizations to improve weather forecasting and explore climate change. Elected Foreign Secretary of the National Academy of Sciences, he initiated the Academy’s Committee on International Security and Arms Control in 1981, opened discussions with a counterpart group in the Soviet Academy of Sciences, and was instrumental in creating international scientific study of the environmental consequences of a nuclear war. As Founding Secretary General of the international Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment and as Dean of the Graduate School at the University of Connecticut, he warned of the dangers of global warming in an address at the California Institute of Technology in 1970 and repeated this warning on national television in 1984. A participant in the 1972 UN Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment and the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, he advocated international cooperation in pursuit of a vision for a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace. Malone came to Connecticut in 1955 from a tenured academic appointment at MIT to establish the Travelers Weather Service, which pioneered in weather probabilities. He went on to become senior vice president and director of research at the Travelers, moving to the University of Connecticut in 1970. He moderated the annual Business Outlook of the Greater Hartford Chamber of Commerce during the 1960s and received the Chamber’s Charter Oak Leadership Medal in 1962. He was named Connecticut Conservationist of the year in 1968 for his leadership of the 100-member Connecticut Clean Water Task Force. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by Wesleyan University in 2007 with the citation: “Your tireless efforts as a steward of Mother Earth are manifestations of your personal commitment, as a man of science and as a man of deep faith, to making life on the planet sustainable for all people and for all time. As an initiator of international and interdisciplinary research programs, you have been recognized as a world leader in building the human capacity to endow future generations with a better world—and a better place to live.” Survivors include his wife, Rosalie Doran Malone, six children, 17 grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.