Gordon Manley - Later Career

Later Career

In 1939 he left Durham to become a Demonstrator in Geography at Cambridge University. From 1942 to 1945 he was a Flight Lieutenant in Cambridge University Air Squadron, but he continued his research and teaching of students from Cambridge and Bedford College, London (the latter institution having been evacuated to Cambridge).

The Royal Meteorological Society's magazine Weather, whose objective was (and still is) to make developments in meteorology accessible to a wider public, started in 1946 during his presidency and benefited from his encouragement.

From 1948 to 1964, Manley was Professor of Geography at Bedford College for Women in the University of London. He maintained his links with Cambridge, one result being the joint participation of undergraduates from both institutions in expeditions to Norway and Iceland.

In 1952 Collins published his Climate and the British Scene in their New Naturalist series. This book, easily accessible to the non-academic reader, was one of his greatest contributions to British climatology. His flair for writing entertainingly as well as informatively about the climate helped him to write a long series of articles for the Manchester Guardian from 1952 onwards about weather and climate events that were of topical interest.

In 1964, at the age of 62, he took on the challenge of founding the new department of Environmental Studies at the equally new Lancaster University. In 1967 he retired and moved back to Cambridge, but he remained a Research Associate. During this period, his research on Manchester rainfall and on Central England temperatures was finally published. The Central England temperature series continues to be updated each month by the UK Meteorological Office.

During 1969-70 he was a Visiting Professor of Meteorology at Texas A&M University. For the rest of his life he continued working and publishing. In all he wrote 182 papers from 1927 onwards. At the time of his death he was assembling instrumental data for the north of England and Scotland back to the 18th century.

He is buried in Coton churchyard.

Read more about this topic:  Gordon Manley

Famous quotes containing the word career:

    Like the old soldier of the ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye.
    Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964)

    He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.
    George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)