Basil John Mason

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Sir (Basil) John Mason CB DSc FRS (born 18 August 1923) is an expert on cloud physics and former Director of the UK Meteorological Office. His work includes the Mason Equation, giving the growth or evaporation of small water droplets. He worked at Imperial College, London, UK from 1948-1965. He was appointed as a lecturer in meteorology in 1948, and in 1961 he was made professor of cloud physics. In the 1960s he helped to modernise the World Meteorological Organization. In 1965 he was awarded the Chree Medal by the Institute of Physics and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was Director of the UK Meteorological Office from 1965-1983, and was President of the Royal Meteorological Society from 1968 to 1970, and is an honorary member of that society. In 1972 he received the Rumford Medal from the Royal Society. In 1973, he was made a companion of the Order of the Bath. From 1974 he has been a Fellow at Imperial College. He was Treasurer for the Royal Society from 1976-1986. In 1979, he was knighted for his services to meteorology. He gave the Royal Society's 1990 Rutherford Memorial Lecture in Canada. In 1991 he received the Royal Medal of the Royal Society. He was Chancellor of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology until 1996, when he was succeeded by Sir Roland Smith. In 1998 he received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from the University of Reading. The National Portrait Gallery has a portrait of Mason. In 2004, Mason opened the Mason Centre for Environmental Flows at the University of Manchester. In 2006, an endowment from Mason enabled the Royal Meteorological Society to establish the Mason Gold Medal. Mason is also Chairman of the British Physics Olympiad Committee. His published books include The Physics of Clouds (1957); Clouds, Rain and Rainmaking (1962); The Surface Waters Acidification Programme (editor, 1990); Acid Rain: Its Causes and its Effects on Inland Waters (1992); Highlights in Environmental Research - Professorial Inaugural Lectures at Imperial College (editor, 2000).