Dixon, Frederick E. (1913–88) meteorologist, historian, and philatelist, was born 27 March 1913 in Oundle, near Peterborough, England, a son of Nathan Dixon and his wife, Edith, née Howitt, who also had another son and a daughter. He attended Deacon's School, Peterborough, and Selwyn College, Cambridge, and graduated from there with first-class honours in mathematics in 1934. He joined the British meteorological service in 1936 and helped to organise forecasts for transatlantic flights. He took up a permanent position in the fledgling Irish meteorological service on 3 March 1939 at Foynes on the Shannon estuary. Training for the new recruits included a specially organised course at the Imperial College of Science, London. The work was a state secret during the war as weather forecasts had important military uses and, despite Irish neutrality, classified synoptic data was passed in cipher to the British authorities. These communications from Irish stations were vital in deciding the timing of the D-day invasions. In 1940 Dixon was transferred to Dublin to organise the meteorological service's library and to produce forecasts for Dublin airport. He was also responsible for producing ciphers for the Irish government. Producing forecasts for the airport was a less than onerous task as there was at first only one flight a day. With the ending of the war in 1945, Dixon had responsibility for forecasting and for training assistant meteorologists and air corps personnel from the military airfield at Baldonnel, Co. Dublin. He was promoted to the post of senior meteorologist in 1956 and assumed the duties of officer-in-charge at the newly established combined training school and synoptic station at Rosslare Harbour. He returned to Dublin in 1962 and was placed in charge of the Dublin airport forecast service (1963–4), the central analysis and forecast office (1964–75) and the climatological division (1975–7).
In the 1950s Dixon published a number of articles on Irish climate history. A love for his adopted city led him to become an active member of the Old Dublin Society as well as an enthusiastic researcher into the history of the capital. In 1968 he wrote a popular history of the Dublin Tailors’ Hall, the last such edifice in the city. The fiftieth anniversary report of the meteorological service (1987) included several essays by Dixon on the history of the service and of Irish meteorology. He was a frequent contributor to the letters column of the Irish Times, was president of the Irish Philatelic Society, published a good deal on Irish philatelic history, and was a founder member of the Postcard Society. He died 4 September 1988 at the Meath Hospital and his body was donated to science. He married Beatrice Butler (1916–2005) in Dublin on 19 April 1950; she was a daughter of James Bayley Butler (qv) and a niece of Edmund J. McWeeney (qv). Beatrice served in the British WAAF during the second world war. After persistent campaigning, she was the first woman to be selected for jury service in Dublin, and unsuccessfully stood as an independent candidate for election in Dublin South-West in the general election of 1957. A noted amateur gardener and local historian, she was also active in the Irish Housewives Association. She died 16 March 2005, survived by an only daughter.