Mary Wilma Hodge

Hodge was born in Calhoun County, Mississippi, the daughter of John Samuel Wymac Hodge[1] and Beulah Spradling Hodge. She earned a bachelor's degree in 1930, and a master's degree in 1931, both at the University of Mississippi. She completed doctoral studies in physics at the University of North Carolina in 1938, with a dissertation titled "Statistical Behavior of Geiger-Müller Tube Counters."[2][3][4]

Hodge taught physics, meteorology, and astronomy courses at the University of Mississippi from 1931 to 1942.[5][6] She also taught at the University of North Carolina.[7] She was co-author of Laboratory Experiments In Physics (1934, 1936), a two-volume college textbook, with S. C. Gladden and W. L. Kennon.[2]

Hodge left academia to be a physicist with the United States Weather Bureau from 1942 to 1966, and with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration from 1966 to 1977.[2] In 1963, she became chief of the Atmosphere Section of the Physical Science Laboratory at the National Weather Service.[8] She worked on measurement instruments,[9] and developed balloon-borne sensors for studying the ozone layer. "She's an expert on the response of the instrument's sensors under various conditions and the corrections needed to make the readings accurate," explained a colleague in 1972.[8]

She was a member of the American Physical Society and the American Meteorological Society.[10] Her research was published in academic journals including American Journal of Physics,[11] Review of Scientific Instruments,[12] Journal of Geophysical Research,[13] and Monthly Weather Review.[14] In 1972, she received a Bronze Metal from Department of Commerce[15] and a Length of Service Award from the National Weather Service.[8]

• "The Physicist and the Weather" (1939)[16]
• "An Interval Meter and Its Application to Studies of Geiger Counter Statistics" (1940, with Raymond L. Driscoll and Arthur Ruark)[12]
• "The Physics Building Project at the University of Mississippi" (1940, with W. L. Kennon, A. B. Lewis, and S. C. Gladden)[11]
• "Superadiabatic Lapse Rates of Temperature in Radiosonde Observations" (1956)[17]
• "On the relations between variations of the Earth's magnetic field and variations of the large-scale atmospheric circulation" (1950, with Oliver R. Wulf)[13]
• "Compatibility of United States Radiosondes" (1965, with Christos Harmantas)[14]
• "Large Irregularities in the Rawinsonde Ascensional Rates within 100 Nautical Miles and Three Hours of Reported Clear Air Turbulence" (1967)[18]
• "Analysis of Clear Air Turbulence from Rawinsonde Ascensional Rates" (1969, with Harold B. Cole and DeVer Colson)[19]

Hodge was active at the Hughes United Methodist Church in Kensington, Maryland. She died in 1999, aged 89 years, at a nursing home in Adelphi, Maryland.[10]