John Latham (physicist)

John Latham (21 July 1937 - 27 April 2021) was a physicist and professor emeritus at the University of Manchester, known for his work on atmospheric electricity and, later in his career, climate engineering.
Latham obtained a PhD on thunderstorm electrification from Imperial College London, where he was supervised by John Mason. He moved to Manchester to take up a lectureship in 1961 and founded the Atmospheric Physics research group. In 1988 was hired as a senior research associate in ESSL/MMM at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado.
Latham is most known for his work on thunderstorm electrification and marine cloud brightening, a form of geoengineering which relies on seawater sprayed from ships. In collaboration with Stephen Salter he developed a scheme involving Flettner vessels.
He supervised over 25 doctoral students, the first of whom was David Stow.
Latham was also a talented writer, and had radio plays broadcast on BBC Radio 4.