Archibald Goldie's father was the Rev Andrew Goldie who was Minister of Glenisla. Archibald attended Harris Academy, Dundee, Angus, and then the University of St Andrews before going to Cambridge to study the Mathematical Tripos. Goldie graduated as a wrangler (first class student) in August 1913.
After graduating Goldie was appointed to the Meteorological Office and initially sent for further training in the Forecast Division. Following this training he was sent to work at Falmouth Observatory. However the start of World War I in 1914 meant that his career took a temporary change of direction. He was sent to Eskdalemuir Observatory where he became L F Richardson's senior assistant in computational weather forecasting. He was commissioned in the Meteorological Section, R. E. and served at St Omar, then in Meteorological Service for the British Army with the 4th Army, and in the last year of the war he set up the Meteorological Organisation for the British Forces in Italy.
After the war ended he was appointed in 1919 as Superintendent of the Meteorological Office and worked in London until October 1924. At this time he returned to Scotland as Superintendent of the Edinburgh Office which was responsible for running three Meteorological and Magnetic Observatories at Aberdeen, Eskdalemuir and Lerwick. In 1938 he was appointed Assistant Director of the London, Meteorological Office, a position he retained until he retired in 1953. He was honoured with the award of a C.B.E. in 1951 for his contributions to the Meteorological Office.
Goldie was a member of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society, joining the Society in December 1926 while he was working in Edinburgh. In fact he was only a member of a couple of years. He was elected to the Royal Society of Edinburgh on 9 March 1925, his proposers being Thomas James Jehu, Ralph Allan Sampson, Sir James Walker, Sir Ernest Maclagan Wedderburn.
An obituary, written by W A Harwood, appears in the Royal Society of Edinburgh Year Book 1965, pages 18-20.
We give a version of this obituary at THIS LINK.
In 1928 Goldie married Marion Nairne Wilson. Four years after her death in 1948 he remarried to Helen Carruthers.
Article by: J J O'Connor and E F Robertson
November 2007