Australia Yearbook - 2001

Chapter 1—Geography and climate 35
Leonard J. (Len) Dwyer (1955–62) joined the Bureau in
September 1937 as a meteorological assistant and soon became a
trainee meteorologist. By 1940 he headed the Bureau’s Training
Section and subsequently became responsible for the RAAF Mobile
Meteorological Flights during World War II. After the war, he
worked in the Aviation Section of the Bureau’s Central Office
before being recruited to the position of Chief Clerk. An aggressive
personality with a flair for management, he presided over a period
of rapid technological progress, and improvement and extension of
Bureau services. He served as President of WMO Regional
Association V from 1957 until 1962. He died in office in May 1962.
William J. (Bill) Gibbs OBE (1962–78) was born in Sydney and
joined the Bureau of Meteorology in 1939 on the eve of World War
II. After almost two years in Port Moresby, he was posted to Allied
Headquarters in Brisbane. After the war, he accompanied H. N.
Warren to the Washington Conference of Directors which
finalised the WMO Convention, and subsequently returned to the
US for study in 1952 as a Fulbright Scholar. Dr Gibbs served as the
Bureau’s Assistant Director Research from 1958 until 1962 and
became Director of Meteorology in 1962. He was First Vice
President of WMO from 1967 until 1978. He played a pioneering
role in Australian tropical meteorology and Antarctic
meteorology and in the study of Australian drought. He retired in
July 1978.
John W. Zillman AO (1978–) joined the Bureau of Meteorology
as a Cadet Meteorologist in Brisbane in 1957. After a period in
operational forecasting in NSW and Queensland, he was
appointed to the Southern Hemisphere Analysis Centre in
Melbourne in 1966 and subsequently to the International
Antarctic Meteorological Research Centre. After study in the US
(1970–72) he became Assistant Director Research in 1974 and
succeeded Dr W. J. Gibbs as Director of Meteorology in July 1978.
He coordinated Australia’s participation in the 1979 Global
Weather Experiment and negotiated the strengthening of the
research role of the Bureau in the early 1980s. He was First Vice
President of WMO from 1987 to 1995, and has been its President
since 1995.