Richard W. Johnson (1929 in El Cajon, California – January 11, 2016 [citation needed]) was an American oceanographer.
He served in the Army during the Korean War, from 1950 to 1954, working on an island in the Aleutian Chain to open up an airstrip.
He worked in the Atmospheric Optics Group (AOG), helping acquire airborne radiometric measurements in areas as far reached as Australia (in support of NASA’s Gemini program) and Thailand.
This was about the time that he developed the concept of the first digital Whole Sky Imager, which eventually was able to measure and detect cloud distributions day and night.
During this time he developed a concept for a zooming fisheye capability, [4] which was patented by University of California San Diego.