Irving P. Krick

Dr. Irving P. Krick (1906 - June 20, 1996) was an American meteorologist and inventor, the founding professor of Department of Meteorology at California Institute of Technology (1933–1948), one of the U.S. Air Force meteorologists who provided forecasts for the Normandy Landings in 1944, a controversial pioneer of long-term forecasting and cloud seeding, and "a brilliant American salesman" who in 1938 started the first private weather business in the United States.

Krick was born in San Francisco in 1906. He attended college the University of California at Berkeley, achieving a bachelor's degree in physics. However, his first career aspiration was music. Krick was an accomplished pianist and pursued music professionally but found it financially unrewarding. Still in early twenties he worked at the radio station and at a stock brokerage – until the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Finally, working for an airline and advice from his brother-in-law, Horace Byers, an MIT graduate, helped him find his true interest in weather.

Around 1930, he began studying at the California Institute of Technology in the Department of Aeronautics, which provided only a few courses in meteorology, notably by Beno Gutenberg (atmospheric structure) and Theodore von Kármán (aeronautics), Krick's advisors in his doctoral studies. Caltech offered the first dedicated meteorology class in the 1933–1934 season. Krick made his name known by a controversial paper asserting that the 1933 crash of USS Akron was a direct consequence of a mistaken forecast by the Weather Bureau. Krick's paper was instrumental to von Kármán's work explaining the actual cause of Akron disaster; he was also instrumental in determining the cause of the USS Macon crash in 1935. These publications brought Krick to the attention of the US Air Force; Krick befriended Air Force chief Hap Arnold, then a colonel stationed at March Field not far from Caltech.

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