Awards

• Short-listed for BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize 2002 (UK)
• Short-listed for Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2002
• Shortlisted for Samuel Johnson Prize 2002.
• Shortlisted for Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2002.

Overview

How an amateur meteorologist forged the language of the skies The Invention of Clouds takes as its focus an extraordinary scientific advance of the early nineteenth century, but also addresses other vital issues of the day, such as religion, aesthetics and literature. It tells the story of a shy young Quaker, Luke Howard, and his pioneering work to define what had hitherto seemed random and mysterious structures - clouds. Howard was catapulted to fame in December 1802 when he named the various types of clouds, a defining moment in natural history and meteorology. His poetic names - such as cirrus, stratus and cumulus - and his groundbreaking work brought him international celebrity, and he became a cult figure for Romantics like Shelley and Goethe. His scheme remains at the heart of modern meteorology, but Howard himself has long been overlooked. In this book Hamblyn restores him, his cultural context and the science he loved, to life.

Full Product Details

9780330391955

Table of Contents

Reviews

'Elegantly written and richly diverting' Guardian

The early 19th century was the heyday of the amateur scientist. The scientific revolution, which began in the mid-17th century, spawned a huge public interest in science as a way of explaining the way the world worked. Young men, largely self-taught, pursued their own lines of scientific inquiry and presented them at large public meetings. It was a time when many natural phenomena remained unexplored and unexamined: the opportunities for making new discoveries were endless. Luke Howard was one such young man. Born in 1772, the son of a self-employed manufacturer and Quaker, he developed an early interest in meteorology, specifically cloud formations. Although it seems odd now, no-one at that time had developed either a completely successful explanation of how clouds were formed or a plausible system for classifying the different kinds of clouds. Hamblyn's biography tells the story of how Howard, who became a full-time pharmacist, developed his early interest in clouds to the point where he was able to deliver a public lecture in 1802 giving the first coherent account of how clouds worked or, as Hamblyn puts it, the 'penetrating... insight that clouds have many individual shapes but few basic forms'. The three basic types that Howard identified cirrus, cumulus and stratus are still used today. Howard's achievement was instantly and widely recognized: his admirers included both Constable and Goethe, who wrote a poem about him. Hamblyn does an excellent job of showing why Howard's work excited so much interest and admiration. He gives a clear explanation of Howard's theories and provides a detailed contextual picture, both of the history of meteorology and the 19th century's fascination with classification and measurement. The biographical detail is thin, but that doesn't matter: the story is of the scientist, rather than the man, and Hamblyn conveys beautifully the excitement and importance of Howard's scientific discovery. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Richard Hamblyn was born in 1965 and is a graduate of the universities of Essex and of Cambridge, where he wrote a doctoral dissertation on the early history of geology in Britain. The Invention of Clouds, his first book, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize; his second book, Terra: Tales of the Earth explores the human consequences of natural disasters. Hamblyn lives and works in London.

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