Harry Wexler

Who was Harry Wexler?

Harry Wexler was an American meteorologist. Wexler had been researching the link connecting chlorine and bromine compounds to the destruction of the stratospheric ozone layers, but died of a heart attack while on vacation in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Wexler had already accepted an invitation to deliver a lecture entitled "The Climate of Earth and Its Modifications" at the University of Maryland Space Research and Technology Institute. Another twelve years would pass before the first papers about the effect of chlorofluorocarbons on the ozone layer were published in 1974, during which CFC production had increased "Had Wexler lived to publish his ideas", author James Rodger Fleming would observe later, "they would certainly have been noticed and could have led to a different outcome and perhaps an earlier coordinated response to the issue of stratospheric ozone depletion."

Wexler attended Harvard University, and in 1939 he was awarded a Ph.D. in meteorology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He worked for the United States Weather Bureau from 1934 until 1942, then served as a Captain to a Lieutenant Colonel with the weather service of the Army Air Corps during World War II from 1942 until 1946. On September 14, 1944, Major Harry Wexler became the first scientist to deliberately fly into a hurricane. He accompanied a flight of a Douglas A-20 "Havoc" that flew into the hurricane to collect scientific data.