10
BAMOS
Mar 2019
Obituary
Vale Henry Phillpot (1919–2018):
Sixty years in meteorology
Prepared by John Zillman
*With help from Bob Brook, Galina Brejneva, Mike Coughlan, Bettye Dixon, Bill Downey, Des Gaffney, Lily Gao, Doug
Gauntlett, Greg Holland, Bill Kininmonth, Mike Manton, Bruce Neal, Neville Nicholls, Peter Noar, Kevin O’Loughlin, Peter
Price and Mary Voice.
With the death of Henry Phillpot on 9 December 2018 at the
age of 99, Australia lost a legend of Antarctic meteorological
research and one of the most admired and respected mentors
of a generation of Bureau of Meteorology research leaders. His
60-year meteorological career embraced forecasting for Allied
operations in World War II, coordinating meteorological support
for the British Atomic Weapons Trials in Australia in the 1950s,
leading international Antarctic analysis and research centres
in Melbourne in the 1960s, guiding Bureau synoptic research
through the 1970s and serving almost two decades of his
retirement as an Honorary Research Associate at the University
of Melbourne. In a ceremony at the Australian Science Festival
in Canberra in 1999, he was honoured as an Australian ‘Science
Hero’ for his Antarctic research.
Henry Robert Phillpot was born at Tottenham in England on
6 August 1919 and migrated to Melbourne with his parents
in 1929. He was dux of his final year of primary school and
continued to star at Box Hill High School from 1932 to 1935. He
was appointed as a clerk in the Postmaster General’s Department
in 1936 and commenced part-time study for a science degree at
the University of Melbourne in 1937. In 1940, he was promoted
to Meteorological Assistant in the Central Weather Bureau (the
Commonwealth Bureau of Meteorology).
With the Bureau’s incorporation into the Royal Australian Air
Force (RAAF) in 1941 for the duration of World War II, Henry
became part of the RAAF Meteorological Service Air Mass
and Frontal Analysis Section (AMFA) in Melbourne where he
met Vera Newton, one of the Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air
Force (WAAAF) charters. They married in 1942. In 1944, Henry
was promoted to Flight Lieutenant and transferred to General
MacArthur’s Allied Command headquarters in Brisbane where
he served with Bill Gibbs, Pat Squires and Ralph Holmes in
providing analysis and forecasting support for Allied air and
naval operations in the Southwest Pacific until the end of
the war. He completed his Bachelor of Science in 1947 and
was appointed as a professional Meteorologist in 1948 in the
Bureau’s Analysis Section where he undertook research into
airport and air route forecasting with his first published paper
appearing in the Bureau’s Weather Development and Research
Bulletin of July 1949.
Henry Phillpot (with pencil) and colleagues examining southern hemisphere synoptic charts in the International Antarctic
Analysis Centre (IAAC) in 1962. From the left: Warren Wilhelm (USA), Rodolfo Montes (Argentina), Henry (IAAC Leader),
Kevin Foley (Royal Australian Navy), Sandy Troup (CSIRO) and Albert Weiller (France). Source: Bureau of Meteorology