Charles Warren Thornthwaite was born in Bay City, Michigan on March 7, 1899. After a
brief stint with the Students' Army Training Corps, he attended Central Michigan
University, earning an A.B. in 1922. He later earned his Ph.D. in geography with
Carl Sauer from the University of California, Berkeley in 1929. Thornthwaite then
got a job as a geographer with the Kentucky Geological Survey from 1926-1930 and as
a faculty member at the University of Oklahoma from 1927-1934. In 1935, Thornthwaite
became chief of the Climatic and Physiographic Division of the U.S. Soil
Conservation Service. It was during this time that Thornthwaite focused on
climatology and performed his investigations on evapotranspiration.
In 1947, Thornthwaite became a professor of climatology at Johns Hopkins University.
At the same time, he became a consultant at Seabrook Farms in New Jersey, working on
planting and harvesting schedules. It was here that he established the Laboratory of
Climatology, which became a research institute in the field of climatology. To deal
with the growing amount of consulting work and research he was doing for both the
public and private sectors, Thornthwaite formed C.W. Thornthwaite Associates in
1952. First associated with Johns Hopkins, and later the Drexel Institute of
Technology, the Laboratory became independent of academic affiliations in 1959 and
fell under C.W. Thornthwaite Associates. Thornthwaite later became a lecturer at the
University of Chicago in 1956.
Thornthwaite had many honors bestowed upon him. The American Geographical Society
made him an Honorary Fellow in 1948 and presented the Cullum Geographical Medal to
him in 1958. The Association of American Geographers awarded him their Outstanding
Achievement Award in 1953 and he served as their Honorary President in 1961.
Thornthwaite was elected president of the Commission for Climatology at the World
Meteorological Organization in 1950 and again in 1953, where he oversaw the
establishment of international guidelines governing the organization and collection
of climate data. Shortly before his death, Central Michigan University awarded him
an honorary degree of Doctor of Science. Thornthwaite died on June 11, 1963.
