Ella Dobson, shortly after arriving at APL in 1960.
Credit: Johns Hopkins APL
News
Remembering Trailblazing Johns Hopkins APL Mathematician Ella Dobson
The life and legacy of Ella Dobson, who retired from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in 1998 after a 36-year career, bridges two national celebrations of heritage and gender: Black History Month and Women’s History Month. Dobson, who died in February at the age of 85, applied mathematical precision to explore the mysteries of the ocean’s surface, and her insightful analyses revealed hidden truths within sea waves. Her groundbreaking work in ocean remote sensing — gathering data about the seas from space — provided a legacy of inspiration for future scientists, engineers and mathematicians.
Colleagues and family members remember Dobson as a brilliant researcher and a generous mentor. She grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, born into a family of education pioneers. Her great-grandfather, Elbert Beck, was a slave who was able to wrest enough of an education to enable him to build and then teach in a school for children of slaves. Eventually, the school was burned, but not before he had given many Black children a start.
The schoolhouse burning did not discourage her grandfather, Joseph Brown Beck, who served as a superintendent of schools in Georgetown, South Carolina. Her father, Joseph Elbert Beck, served as a high school principal in Greenville, South Carolina, for 21 years and had a high school named after him; it closed after four years, but today, the Beck Academy Middle School — a magnet school in Greenville County, South Carolina — is named for him.
“So going to college, you see, was not so much a decision as something that was expected of me,” she shared in a 1968 APL News article. “But being a mathematician was something else again.” She attended the historically Black Fisk College (now Fisk University) in Nashville, Tennessee, and decided, in her sophomore year, to pursue a degree in mathematics.
Dobson in 1968. This photo appeared in an APL News article titled, “BPD’s Women Mathematicians,” from the Vol. 24, No. 9 (September 1968) issue.
Credit: Johns Hopkins APL
She joined APL in 1962, two years after receiving her bachelor’s degree. She began her career in the Guidance, Control and Navigation Systems Group in the Laboratory’s Fleet Systems Department (her section was later moved to the Space Department) analyzing missile systems, and she soon became involved in research on radar probing of atmospheric phenomena. Quickly establishing her expertise, she made important contributions to investigations of rain effects, clear air turbulence and radar echoes from migrating birds.
Later, she applied her analysis skills to radar altimeter observations of the sea surface. She worked closely with oceanographer David Porter on an altimeter onboard the Geosat, a U.S. Navy satellite designed, built and operated by APL, to measure sea surface heights to within 5 centimeters. After an 18-month-long classified mission for the Navy, Geosat’s scientific Exact Repeat Mission (ERM) began on Nov. 8, 1986. When the ERM ended in January 1990 (after both onboard tape recorders failed), more than three years of precise altimeter data was available to the scientific community.
Dobson’s development, validation and application of altimeter wind and wave algorithms are widely recognized by the international ocean remote sensing community.
“We worked closely with Dr. [Allan] Robinson of Harvard University on the Geosat altimeter in understanding the system and the data, and together developing seminal methods for employing the altimeter data to map the currents in the oceans,” said Porter. “Geosat was the precursor to a lineage of satellite altimeters that continue to monitor our oceans, leading up to the Surface Water Ocean Topography now in orbit. She even developed the Dobson algorithm for estimating wind speed from the altimeter.
“We wrote several papers together and published a paper entitled, Radar Altimetry and Global Climatic Change,” he continued. “This was in 1992! We were pioneers at APL in climate studies.”
Dobson and David Porter pose in front of the Injection Station and the 60-foot antenna dish on APL’s Main Campus in Laurel, Maryland. This photo appeared in an APL News article titled, “New Findings Presented for Ocean Currents, Ionosphere Studies,” from the Vol. 45, No. 2 (February 1989) issue.
Credit: Johns Hopkins APL
Dobson will also be remembered as a mentor, Porter said, sharing a story he has passed on to colleagues, students and his own children.
“I was showing her some of the plots I had generated from the Geosat altimeter and was telling her what I thought the data meant,” he said. “She put up her hand and stopped me. She looked right into my eyes and said, ‘David, David … don’t you tell the data, let the data tell you!’ What a great lesson I learned that day and continue to share.”
Frank Monaldo arrived at APL in 1977 as a physicist in the Space Department, and Dobson took him under her wing. “She helped mentor younger staff, including me,” he said. “If I came to her with a problem, she didn’t always have an answer. She usually had a way of reframing the problem that helped me address it.”
Although APL’s Talent Services Department is unable to confirm that Dobson was the first black mathematician at APL, former colleagues say that given the time — the 1960s — it’s likely that if she was not the first, she was one of the first. However, she made little of that distinction. In fact, they said she likely faced more challenges because she was a woman.
“I have a story, perhaps apocryphal, about her early years at the Lab,” offered Monaldo, who retired from APL in 2019. “At some point, perhaps in the 1960s, she needed to participate in a field test. Apparently, a woman on a field test was unusual at the time. A superior came to her and asked if they could get permission from her husband to participate. Rather than get angry, she laughed heartily. The person who asked the question sheepishly retreated and there was never a problem with Ella on field tests after that.”
Porter said whatever challenges Dobson faced, she did not share them with him. “We worked together closely. We traveled the world together going to conferences,” he said. “She always struck me as a person who was known as an expert and held her own as a scientist.”
Dobson in 2010 at a Christmas party for the Space Department’s Ocean Remote Sensing Group.
Credit: Frank Monaldo
Dobson’s son, Hans, said he remembers his mother focusing “not so much on color, but on women’s empowerment. She was one of the only women out of the group full of men for a while. So, she had a lot to prove, and she proved it by her actions, her expertise.”
However, he added, the significance of her race in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) field was not lost on her. “There was no doubt that she wanted people of color to know that anything, any career, is possible; that there was a wider field of circumstances that you can explore. She had these sayings: Nothing can stop you. Never stop learning. Don’t stop until it’s done correctly. Always be organized. Be prepared.
“I didn’t go into math — it’s embarrassing to have had a mother so smart in math and not be good at it at all,” he laughed. “But her lessons resonated with me and laid the path for my success in television production.” Hans Dobson was a founding producer and host of Rap City, a music video program that aired on the Black Entertainment Television network from 1989 to 2008.
“I remember as a kid, APL would stock its pond with fish and Mom would take me to these fishing derbies … she loved to fish,” he said. “They would also have these barbecues — it was really the only time I could visit, because of security — but I remember looking at the big satellite dish and thinking, ‘Mom had something to do with whatever that is!’
“As a kid, I didn’t know the extent of it,” he added, “but boy was I impressed.”
A memorial service for Ella Dobson will be held on Wednesday, March 27, at the Fort Lincoln Funeral Home & Cemetery. The viewing is scheduled for 1 p.m., followed by a funeral and interment at 1:30 p.m.