Holiday snaps: Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac (1778-1850)

摘要

Weather has regular series of articles entitled "Pen portraits of Presidents" (of the Royal Meteorological Society (RMS)) and "Meteorologist's profile". The following note on Gay-Lussac is not a formal portrait. He died in 1850, the year in which theSociety was founded, so he was never a Fellow of RMS, let alone its President. Nor was he a meteorologist, except insofar as many scientists of the time were interested in the atmosphere as a natural laboratory. Yet, 150 years after his death, his findings underpin almost any discussion on the atmosphere and emphasise the truly international nature of our science.