Scientific Bio

Dr. Don Latham

Dr. Latham was awarded a BS in Physics from Pomona College, Claremont, Calif. In 1960. He obtained MS and PhD degrees from New Mwxico Tech, where he studied with Dr. Marx Brook, in 1964 and 1968. He taught Atmospheric Science at the University of Miami, Dept of Atmospheric Science from 1968 to 1975. He then moved to the Fire Sciences Laboratory of the USDA Forest Service in Missoula, Montana, from which he retired in September of 2002.

He has studied all aspects of the relationship of lightning and thunderstorms to forest fires, including generation of space charge, lightning from pyrocumulus, lightning ignition of fires, and optical emissions from fires. His additional interests are connection of fire models and mesoscale atmospheric models, basic fire physics, radioastronomy, SETI, and Artificial Intelligence.

He has been married to the same wife for 47 years, and they together have three sons who are married and gainfully employed.