From April 1939 to 1944 the official weather station was in the backyard of Alvin and Edna Cardwell's home at 1928 Humboldt Street in Manhattan, Kansas.
[1][6] After WW II, as head of KSU's physics department, Cardwell hired several young physicists with doctoral degrees.
These physicists established physics research at KSU and in the late 1940s the department was authorized to grant M.S.
Upon his recovery he returned to the physics department and in 1957 resumed the departmental headship, continuing in that capacity until 1967.
In 1960 his undergraduate alma mater, now the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, awarded him an honorary Doctor of Sciences degree.