[2] Born in Wrexham but raised in Yorkshire, where his father was a shop manager, he won a scholarship to the University of Leeds, where he gained first class honours in mathematics.
Sutcliffe first made a major impact with the publication in 1939 of his book Meteorology for Aviators, which became essential reading for RAF pilots during the Second World War.
Later in the war he worked for Bomber Command, playing an important role in forecasting for air raids over Germany.
During and after the war, Sutcliffe also worked on the theory of meteorology, and his most important contribution was to use pressure instead of height as vertical co-ordinate in the atmosphere.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1957;[1] a development which was widely seen as confirmation that meteorology had been accepted as a true science.