John was born in Boston, Mass., July 8, 1926. His varied, lifelong career was in geology and meteorology.
He graduated Deerfield Academy and before college served briefly in the Army Air Corps. In the early 1960s, in Fairbanks, Alaska, he worked for NASA on Tiros 2, the first generation of weather satellites. Then for many years he was a staff scientist-engineer and weather observer at the Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire.
In both New England and Alaska, and well into his 70s, he was a mountain hiker and climber, both for his professional and scientific work and for recreation. After retirement he and his wife, Mary, sailed their 31-foot sloop along the Maine coast and several times from New England to the Bahamas.
He died Jan. 20, 2020, at age 93. (Mary died just six weeks earlier.) They are survived by sons Andrew and Nathaniel; daughters Catherine Gordon and Lucy Hersey; and seven grandchildren.