Sir Basil John Mason, FRS, worked at Imperial College London from 1948 to 1965, where he was appointed as a Lecturer in Meteorology in 1948, and was made Professor of Cloud Physics in 1961. In 1965, he was awarded the Chree Medal by the Institute of Physics and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was Director of the UK Meteorological Office from 1965 to 1983, and was President of the Royal Meteorological Society from 1968 to 1970, and is an honorary member of that society. In 1972 he received the Rumford Medal from the Royal Society. In 1973, he was made a companion of the Order of the Bath. From 1974 he has been a Fellow at Imperial College. He was Treasurer for the Royal Society from 1976 to 1986. In 1979, he was knighted for his services to meteorology. He gave the Royal Society's 1990 Rutherford Memorial Lecture in Canada. In 1991 he received the Royal Medal of the Royal Society. He was Chancellor of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology until 1996.