Roger Lhermitte

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Roger M. Lhermitte (May 28, 1920 – November 21, 2016) was a French meteorologist who helped pioneer the use of Doppler radar in weather science. He was born in Ergal, France, and his early work led to a lifelong career in radar meteorology, with more than 100 publications and many patents.

During World War II, he was forced to work for Siemens in Berlin. After the war he studied at the University of Paris, writing a doctoral thesis on studying precipitation by analyzing radar echoes. He began his career in France's national meteorology service and started collaborating with North American researchers, visiting the United States in the mid-1950s and meeting key scientists who would shape his future work.

Lhermitte moved to the United States in 1961 to work with Walter Atlas at the Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories, then worked at Sperry Rand and later joined the National Severe Storms Laboratory. He helped develop pulsed Doppler radar and contributed to early radar networks. In 1967 he moved to the Wave Propagation Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, and in 1970 he became a professor at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science.

At the University of Miami, Lhermitte led the creation of a 94-GHz Doppler radar for cloud observations, with the system built in 1987. His work at this very high frequency allowed scientists to study drop sizes in clouds, advancing our understanding of precipitation. He retired in the early 1990s and later wrote a book sharing his experiences with centimeter and millimeter-wavelength radars.

Roger Lhermitte passed away in Miami, Florida, in 2016. He was honored with awards for his pioneering contributions to radar meteorology, including the Second Half Century Award and the J. C. Stevens Award.