Alfred H. Woodcock was born on September 7, 1905 in Atlanta, Georgia. His formal education ended very early as his father had very little regard for school and Woodcock went to work in a wide variety of jobs in the seasonal economy of the southeastern United States after dropping out of high school. After moving to Massachusetts and resuming his education at a local agricultural school, he worked on farms and did odd jobs. Woodcock heard the research vessel Atlantis was looking for hands to sign on for a research cruise under the command of Columbus Iselin. The Atlantis was the first deep-water research ship of the fledgling Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). Under the direction of Dr. Henry Bigelow of Harvard University, WHOI was formed in 1930 and funded by a Rockefeller Foundation grant of 3 million dollars. Woodcock signed on and became a valued member of the crew, rising to the position of chief scientist in 1935. Woodcock had found his calling in atmospheric research and oceanography, and he began his research into the soaring patterns of marine birds, sailing patterns of jellyfish and the ways that dolphins and porpoises ride along the bow of sailing ships. Woodcock continued to conduct experiments aboard the Atlantis until 1942.

During the Second World War, Woodcock worked with the U.S. Navy to develop smoke screens that could be used to camouflage allied vessels at sea. After the end of the war, Woodcock continued to work in conjunction with the Navy to study wind patterns at sea. Beginning in 1942 he was employed at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts, first as a research associate and then as an oceanographer. He conducted research into oceanography and atmospheric science, studying sea salt and its affect on precipitation. From 1949 to 1953 Woodcock published a series of groundbreaking scientific papers about the research he had conducted into atmospheric sea salt. In 1951, he met and began to work with one of his primary collaborators, Duncan Blanchard. Woodcock and Blanchard would collaborate on atmospheric research and carry on a long running correspondence.

In the early 1950s Woodcock was involved in Project Shower, which investigated the physics and chemistry of warm rain in Hawaii. This was a cooperative project involving WHOI and the Pineapple Research Institute and funded by the Office of Naval Research (ONR). The data and final report of Project Shower was published in 1957 in the journal Tellus. Woodcock also published a paper in 1958 which dealt with the behavior of atmospheric sea salt in hurricanes. In this period Woodcock collaborated with Duncan Blanchard and also with chemist James Lodge and meteorologist E.G. "Taffy" Bowen among others. In 1961 Woodcock was awarded an honorary PhD from Long Island University as a doctor of science. It was not long after (1962) that Dr. Woodcock moved to Hawaii, where he concentrated on the study of atmospheric sea salt in Hawaii from 1962 to 1965.

From 1963 to 1972 Woodcock was a research associate in the Department of Oceanography at the University of Hawaii and a research associate at the Hawaiian Institute of Geophysics. In Hawaii, Woodcock conducted atmospheric studies at the dormant volcano Mauna Kea and also did research on Lake Waiau, an alpine lake that is near the summit of Mauna Kea. He developed a theory of "mountain breathing" where gasses entered and exited the mountain. Woodcock conducted research into the movement patterns of the Portuguese Man 'o War, Physalia, and continued research into Sargassum and studies of Hawaiian cloud physics. His primary collaborator during this period continued to be Duncan Blanchard, but he also conducted research with James Hughes of ONR, as well as researchers Jack Warner and Sean Twomey in Australia.

Woodcock was retired from the University of Hawaii in 1972, but continued to work on projects relating to atmospheric science. Woodcock became interested in fog formation and conducted research into fog in Alaska and Woods Hole, MA. He continued the research begun in the 1960s by further investigating the phenomenon of mountain breathing at Mauna Kea and did further research in Lake Waiau. Much of the funding for Woodcock's research came from the Office of Naval Research and his primary contact was James Hughes, in the Atmospheric Research department of the Office of Naval Research. Woodcock's ONR funding began with Project Shower and was terminated in 1984. In 1988, Woodcock was named Scientist Emeritus by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and in 1994 he was presented with a lifetime achievement award by the American Meteorological Society.

Chronology of Events