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Robert fitzory
Robert Fitzroy was a British naval commander, hydrographic, and meteorologist. he commanded the HMS beagle in it second survey expedition which circumnavigated the world with Charles Darwin. his interest in meteorology grew as a result of the weather encountered by the beagle. his written record of the expedition, published in 1839, contains many references to the weather. after Fitzroy retired he turned his attention to the study of meteorology. -
Johan Jacob Nervander
Johan Nervander was a Finnish physicist and poet whose teacher K.F.Gauss influenced him to study geomagnetism. In the 1820’s, there was little interest in the subject in Finland, but Nervander met the Russian meteorologist and academician A. Kupfer of St. Petersburg who strongly supported the idea of magnetic studies. Regular magnetic and meteorological observations from observatory commenced in 1844. nervander was appointed as its first director. -
Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz
Jean Agassiz, born in Switzerland, was a naturalist who worked in areas including palaeontology, biology, glaciology, and geology. In particular, he did pioneering work in establishing the existence of ice ages, which of course are related to the long term climatic history of the earth. -
John Wise
John Wise was an American aeronaut who made approximately 470 balloon flights. For him, the balloon was more than a novelty. His flights were done to investigate the atmosphere and many of his observations had scientific value. In one flight in June 1843 he encountered a thunderstorm. He flew under a large dark threatening black cloud and was swept upward in an ascending vortex that caused his balloon to spin and swing violently. -
James Glaisher
James Glaisher was an English meteorologist and aeronaut. He is best known for series of scientific balloon ascents that he made from 1862 to 1866. -
Radhanath Sikdar
Radhanath Sikdar was a Bengali mathematician and surveyor who was the superintendent of the Calcutta meteorological observatory from 1852 to 1862. His first task was to prepare a table for reducing barometric observations to a standard temperature of 32 degrees Fahrenheit. He developed the necessary formula to do this, based on the known thermal expansion and contraction with temperature of the barometer brass scale and the mercury itself. -
Angelo Pietro Secchi
Angelo Secchi was an Italian Jesuit astronomer who invented the meteorograph. He received a prize for it at the Paris international exhibition in July 1867. -
Thomas Stevenson
Thomas Stevenson was a Scottish civil engineer who invented the meteorological instrument shelter that came to be known as the Stevenson screen. The screen is essentially a ventilated box that encloses the instruments. They are protected from direct solar radiation but at the same time can circulate freely around them. -
Leon Foucault
Leon Foucault was a French physicist who demonstrated the rotation of the earth through an experiment using what came to be known as the Foucault pendulum. The rotation of the earth means that it is not a fixed frame of reference, so parcels of air moving in the atmosphere with no apparent forcing still deviate from the straight line of motion expected on a fixed reference frame. -
Henry Tracey coxwell
Henry Coxwell was a British aeronaut who was the pilot in a series of scientific balloon ascents with James Glaisher in the 1860's. The British association for the advancement of science decided in 1859 to consider the feasibility of making scientific observations in the upper levels of the atmosphere by means of balloon ascent. The committee in charge of this project entered into a contract in 1861 with Coxwell for a balloon and his services as a pilot. -
John Ruskin
John Ruskin was an English art critic, poet and essayist. He supported naturalism in art, and argued that the naturalistic style of some then-curre4nt landscape painters such as J. M. W. Turner was superior to the classical style of the old masters. -
Johann Gregor Mendel
Johann Mendel was an Austrian botanist and mathematician who is best remembered as the 'father' of the science of genetics. Mendel also had a keen interest in the weather. He made weather observations and maintained careful record of the daily weather and the various weather elements. In this he was similar to others such as Dalton whose avocation had also been the weather. -
William Thomson (Lord Kelvin)
William Thomson was a Scottish physicist and engineer. He made a wide range of contributions to meteorology, but is best remembered as the originator of the Kelvin temperature scale. -
John Welsh
John Welsh was an English meteorologist affiliated with the Kew observatory. In 1852 the directors of the observatory decided to investigate the meteorology and physical characteristics of the upper atmosphere through balloon flights that would carry observers and instruments aloft. -
George Goyder
Goyder was an English-born surveyor who spent most of his life in South Australia, where he became assistant surveyor-general in 1856 and surveyor general in 1861. -
A. C. Eiffel
A. C. Eiffel was a French engineer who built bridges and other large structures. He designed the large iron tower that was constructed from 1887 to 1889 in Paris and came to bear his name. The tower immediately found practical use as a giant radio broadcasting mast, and Eiffel also used it in wind resistance and aerodynamics experiments. -
Thaddeus Lowe
Thaddeus Lowe was an American inventor and aeronaut. As a boy he was fascinated with the winds and the movements of the clouds. This interest probably contributed to his becoming and aeronaut. As a young man he studied chemistry, aeronautics and meteorology and made weather observations from his balloons. -
Joseph Stefan
Joseph Stephan was an Austrian physicist who in 1879 gave an empirical demonstration that radiation emitted form a black body is proportional to the fourth power of its absolute temperature. -
Mark Twain
Mark Twain was an American writer. He travelled extensively in the United States and around the world. He encountered many different types of weather during those travels and seemed stimulated to write about his weather experiences. -
Karl Weyprecht
Karl Weyprecht was a austro-hungarian naval officer and arctic explorer who was the co-leader of teh expedition that discovered franz Josef Land in 1873. he was not, however, the typical polar explorer of the time.
