Oliver Lanard Fassig

Who was Oliver Lanard Fassig?

Oliver Lanard Fassig was an American meteorologist and climatologist who worked for the United States Weather Bureau initially as part of the Signal Corps of the United States War Department and later affiliated with the United States Department of Agriculture.

Oliver Lanard Fassig was born at Columbus, Ohio, on April 5, 1860, son of Mathias and Elizabeth Fassig. He attended Ohio State University and received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1882. He then studied at Johns Hopkins University under the guidance of American geologist William Bullock Clark, where in 1899 he received the first PhD in meteorology ever earned in the United States. His doctoral thesis was on the broad pressure relations of distinctive types of March weather over North America. On September 14, 1898, he married Ann Green McCoy, of Annapolis, Maryland.