G. M. B. Dobson

Gordon Miller Bourne Dobson (* February 25, 1889, † March 11, 1976 in Oxford ) was a British physicist and meteorologist.

Life and work

Dobson was one of the pioneers of the stratosphere and ozone research. To this end, he developed the Dobson spectrophotometer in 1924. He was the first to the seasonal variations in the thickness of the ozone layer for his measurements on the Antarctic station Halley Bay in the years 1956-1959. These were the fluctuations whose significant gain were discovered during the 1970s and 1980s by Robert Watson in 1985 and known as the ozone hole.

After Dobson and the Dobson unit is named, a measure of the thickness of the ozone layer. In 1927 he was elected as a member ( "Fellow" ) to the Royal Society, which in 1942 awarded him the Rumford Medal.