Bernard Vonnegut

Bernard Vonnegut ( born August 29, 1914 in Indianapolis, Indiana, † April 25, 1997 in Albany, New York) was an American scientist. He is known for inventing the vaccination of clouds with silver iodide.

Vonnegut was the older brother of writer Kurt Vonnegut. He studied chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a bachelor 's degree in 1936 and his doctorate in physical chemistry in 1939. Afterwards he was at the research laboratories of General Electric in Schenectady. There, Irving Langmuir had begun research on the vaccination of clouds with condensation nuclei ( producing precipitation ) using dry ice. Vonnegut suggested the use of silver iodide, which is still used for such projects. In 1952 he went from General Electric to Arthur D. Little, Inc., and from 1967 he was professor of atmospheric science (Atmospheric Sciences) at the State University of New York at Albany. In 1984 he was Distinguished University Professor and 1985 he retired.

He held 28 patents. In 1997 he was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize for a study of the degree of plucking chickens as a measure of the strength of tornadoes. Vonnegut was a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union and the Royal Meteorological Society. He was Honorary President of the International Commission of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics.

Kurt Vonnegut took in some of his novels relating to the work of his brother ( as in Cat's Cradle on the cloud seeding ).