The life and times of Uwe Radok

This is a reprint of an article by Peter Schwerdtfeger in the
Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol 19 page 1, (2006)

As a young university student, Uwe Radok fled
Germany as Nazism’s grip intensified. He found
himself working as an engineering draftsman in
England before becoming interned, along with
future Nobel Prize winners. As one of the
“Dunera Boys”, so well described by the author
Cyril Pearl, he involuntarily reached Australia
for a further period of internment and subsequent
release on voluntarily joining the Australian
Army in 1942. This decision entitled him to
further studies in Meteorology at the University
of Melbourne after the close of hostilities.
Through his monumental PhD thesis under Dr.
Fritz Loewe, another German refugee, he was
that notable polar explorer’s only higher degree
candidate.
Radok’s interests covered an enormous range of
experimental and theoretical studies. Feeling
isolated in the diminutive Meteorology
Department of the University, he sought
cooperation with research partners from many
organisations, including the Bureau of
Meteorology, CSIRO, the Snowy Mountains
Hydro-electric Authority, the (then) Weapons
Research Establishment and Antarctic Division.
It was with the latter that he built up a
remarkably successful programme in Glaciology,
years before anyone else in the Australian
meteorological community realised the
significance of Antarctic land- and sea-ice as
long and short-term climate indicators. In a
country devoid of glaciers, many, including Prof.
Bill Budd, were able to build their careers on
Radok’s pioneering ideas.
Following the University’s access to digital
computing facilities on CSIRAC, Radok
continued to demonstrate his versatility as he and
his student Dr. Dick Jenssen managed to wring
out Australia’s first numerical weather forecasts
from a primitive system which ran with a 100
memory elements! Later he supervised the
BoM’s pioneers, including Ross Maine, in this
important field.
Responding to problems experienced by higher
flying civilian aircraft as passenger jets
commenced service in Australia, he cooperated
with Prof. Elmar Reiter of Colorado State
University and Kevin Spillane of the BoM, in
clarifying concepts of clear air turbulence.
His support for and encouragement of students
was enormous. When the University Radio Club
sought help in building an antenna to receive the
then revolutionary satellite images of the Earth’s
clouds, his decision to offer space and funds was
rewarded by successful reception of images
which greatly helped the BoM until it built its
own receiving station.
In spite of his prodigious personal output of
publications and a continuous stream of
successful graduate students, circumstances were
such that in 1977 he felt that he had no choice
but to leave the University of Melbourne, which
he had intellectually enriched for a quarter of a
century. The U.S. benefited from his last decade
of research.
Nevertheless, Australia remained home to Uwe
Radok and he returned to retire quietly with his
wife Anita. Even now, having celebrated his 90th
birthday earlier this year, email enables him to
remain in contact with his many friends,
including former students and colleagues. Many
of these students have made distinguished
careers in Meteorology and they will applaud the
decision by AMOS, facilitated by the generosity
of some of them, to found the annual “Uwe
Radok Award” for the best PhD thesis submitted
at an Australian University.