Welcoming Address on Behalf of the National 
Science Foundation 
Eart G. DROESSLER 
Program Director for Atmospheric Sciences, National Science Foundation 
Ladies and Gentlemen: It is my special privilege to Join in these words 
of weleome to you and to bring you the greetings of Dr. Alan T. Water- 
man, the Director of the National Science Foundation. All of us who in 
any way helped with the arrangements for this Conference are highly 
gratified by the enthusiastic response you have shown by your attendance. 
I believe we can certainly predict a most successful meeting. 
Early suggestions for this meeting grew naturally out of the very fruit- 
ful First Conference on the Physics of Cloud Precipitation Particles held 
about three years ago at Woods Hole. Considerable has happened in the 
interim. 
In Washington we have seen the work of the President’s Advisory Com- 
mittee on Weather Control brought to an orderly close with a final report 
which stressed the importance of basie research and recommended that 
the Government give full encouragement and support to the widest pos- 
sible competent research as the surest, most direct way to success in any 
attempt at modifying the weather. 
In July of 1958, central responsibility for Federal support of research 
and evaluation of weather modification was given by the Congress to the 
National Science Foundation. A new program was established with the 
objective of studying more intensively and systematically the scientific 
basis of weather modification, through support of competent scientists 
working in cloud physies and allied fields. 
Accordingly, we were pleased when one of the first grants approved by 
NSF under the new program was awarded to the American Geophysical 
Union for the support of this Woods Hole Conference; for we believe the 
bringing together of the world’s foremost researchers in the field at a 
meeting such as this represents an important step forward toward the pro- 
gram objective. 
