I got started in meteorology as an Air Force student at the University of Chicago in 1953, taking Herbert Riehl's tropical meteorology class when he first used his text book (1954) well before the impact of the satellite and computer. I have been to all American Meteorological Society tropical conferences but one.

This talk will attempt a survey of the changing physical ideas and research philosophy on hurricanes and tropical meteorology over the last 50 years. Although technology and the increase of talented researchers in the field have brought major improvements in understanding and forecasting, we still have a number of basic physical questions yet to be resolved. This talk will give a personal view of some of the important advances over the last 50 years, some of the failures and some of the challenges we have yet to face.