Lloyd Berkner

Who was Lloyd Berkner?

Lloyd Viel Berkner was an American physicist and engineer. He was one of the inventors of the measuring device that since has become standard at ionospheric stations because it measures the height and electron density of the ionosphere. The data obtained in the worldwide net of such instruments were important for the developing theory of short wave radio propagation to which Berkner himself gave important contributions.

Later he investigated the development of the Earth's atmosphere. Since he needed data from the whole world, he proposed the International Geophysical Year in 1950. At that time, the IGY was the largest cooperative study of the Earth ever undertaken.

Berkner was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1956. The IGY was carried out by the International Council of Scientific Unions while he was president in 1957-59. He was also a member of the President's Scientific Advisory Committee in 1958 while he was president of Associated Universities Inc.

In 1963, Berkner, with L.C. Marshall, advanced a theory to describe the way in which the atmospheres of the solar system's inner planets had evolved.