V: Verner Finland was born on December 6, 1915 and became a professor at UW-Madison. He is known as the “father of satellite meteorology” because of his historical role in defining that area of ​​research.

In the late 1950s, he and Robert Parent, a professor of electrical engineering at UW, developed a device for measuring the earth’s temperature from a satellite. It was the first successful satellite operation to measure the Earth.

In 1963, he designed the Spin-Scan cloud camera, which was a milestone in a satellite meter that flew throughout the 1960s and provided quality images of the earth’s surface and atmosphere. These instruments laid the foundation for describing the weather to the world’s functional weather satellites. He proposed a device to measure atmospheric temperature and water vapor distribution from a geostationary satellite; these were measurements that became available in the 1980s.

Professor Finland also directed the development of McIDAS computer software, which is designed to analyze and interpret large sets of data arising from satellite observations. This software, first developed in the early 1970s and maintained for more than 40 years, remains the primary tool for analyzing satellite weather observations at forecasting centers and universities around the world.