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.