André Robert was born on April 28th, 1929 in New York City (U.S.). He emigrated to Canada--Grand Mere (Quebec)--in May 1937 and obtained Canadian Citizenship in 1967. His university education was at Laval University (BSc, 1952), the University of Toronto (MSc, 1953) and McGill University (PhD, 1965).
He started his career as a weather forecaster with the Meteorological Service of Canada, but in 1959 transferred to research where he was engaged in the development of atmospheric models for short and medium-range forecasts. His chief accomplishments were the development and implementation of efficient numerical techniques to solve the interacting time-dependent partial differential equations that govern the evolution of the atmosphere. Robert was the only scientist in the world between 1963 and 1970 to attempt to produce meteorological forecasts with a spectral model--and the semi-Lagrangian scheme, where he combined existing Lagrangian methods with his semi-implicit scheme.
In contrast to many scientists in this field who aim primarily at improving accuracy, he always professed to devise efficient numerical methods, that is to say, to attain a given degree of precision with the least amount of computation. The methods that he developed are now used in models of the world's largest weather prediction and climate research centres.
Source: John Digby Reid, Chair of the Scientific Committee of the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS).
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