Charlotte Russ Benton

At the age of 97, Charlotte Russ Benton died peacefully in her sleep, from natural causes, on November 30, 2020, in Baltimore, Maryland.

Born in Rock Island, Illinois on August 16, 1923, Charlotte was the daughter of a machinist and a homemaker, and the third of four children. From an early age, she quietly challenged prevailing gender and class expectations. She excelled at science and math, played the violin, and taught herself tennis out of a book. After attending nearby Augustana College for two years, Charlotte transferred to the University of Chicago to complete her Bachelor of Science degree.

Even more exceptionally for her generation, Charlotte pursued graduate studies in the new field of meteorology, earning a master’s degree at the University of Chicago. She was one of only three women to complete the university’s Institute of Meteorology forecasting course in 1944, graduating alongside 309 male air force cadets and naval ensigns. She later became an instructor in the program, which trained military forecasters bound for the European and Pacific fronts in World War II. By condensing a two-year course of study into nine months, the university managed to offer seven training courses for military cadets between 1941 and 1945. Charlotte Benton was part of this historic effort.

The University of Chicago was home to the “Chicago School,” founded and led by the Norwegian meteorologist Carl-Gustaf Rossby, a prominent advocate for the new academic discipline in the Unites States. The university was a center of ground-breaking research in meteorology throughout the Second World War. Charlotte worked with other meteorologists gathering data from weather stations around the Chicago area (at that time, before satellites, forecasters relied on field observations and data from weather balloons).

At the University of Chicago, Charlotte met another Rossby student, meteorologist Dr. George Benton, and the couple married on June 21, 1945. They moved to Baltimore in 1948, when George joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins University. The couple started a family, eventually raising four children.

In Baltimore, Charlotte became an active member of the Johns Hopkins community. She was devoted to the Friends of the Johns Hopkins University Library and served for one year as its president, and she worked for many years as a docent on the historic Hopkins properties Homewood House and Evergreen House. She was a regular at academic lectures and graduation ceremonies, especially during the years that George served as dean of arts and science and vice-president of the Homewood division.

Charlotte maintained active ties to the meteorology community throughout her life. She traveled extensively with George as he took up took up prominent roles in the field as president of the World Meteorological Organization, Associate Director of NOAA in the Carter Administration, and head of U.S. scientific delegations to the Soviet Union and China (even before normalization of relations between the United States and China). Charlotte went to China several times as part of American-Chinese scientific exchanges George organized when he was at NOAA, and she taught English to Chinese meteorologists during a six-month stint in Beijing and Nanjing in 1983. Many of the couple’s closest friends were meteorologists, and they regularly attended annual meetings of the American Meteorological Society together.

When George died in 1999, Charlotte moved to Roland Park Place in Baltimore. She continued traveling to places as far away as Antarctica and Australia, and until recently revisited at least one favorite city in Europe each year. She was adventurous—she went paragliding at the age of 87 in the Cayman Islands—and athletic. Outgoing and sociable, she cultivated a distinctive personal style and was always ready for a party.

She will be remembered as a loving mother and grandmother, a gifted conversationalist, avid museum goer, scientist, dedicated student of languages (over the years, she took classes and belonged to groups to practice her French, Italian and Chinese), and lover of reading and books (for many years she was a member of three local book groups simultaneously).

Charlotte Benton is survived by her four children, Sandra Benton Solomon (Nashville), Barbara Benton Hill (Baltimore), Jeffrey Benton (Boulder), and Lauren Benton (New Haven), six grandchildren (Gregory, Douglas, Bradley, Elizabeth, Victoria, and Gabriela), four great grandchildren, and her brother Jerald Russ (San Clemente, CA).

There will be no funeral service because of Covid-19; memorial gatherings are postponed.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that gifts in memory of Charlotte Benton be directed to support Special Collections at the Johns Hopkins Sheridan Libraries. People may contribute online or send a check (payable to The Sheridan Libraries) to: The Johns Hopkins Sheridan Libraries, 3400 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21210 with a note indicating that the gift is in honor of Charlotte Benton.