Science News: Predicting the Weather: Victorians and the Science of Meteorology: "PREDICTING THE WEATHER: Victorians and the Science of Meteorology

KATHARINE ANDERSON

Once the telegraph escalated the speed of information dissemination, maritime-dependent Great Britain in 1854 established a government office to collect data on the weather throughout the British Isles. Soon afterward and with mixed results, the officials there began attempting to predict the weather, and thus was born the science of meteorology. The public attention paid to the office and to the new science was so intense and the demands so unyielding, that the chief of the office eventually committed suicide. Anderson, a professor of the history of science at York University in Canada, extends her discussion to the scientific practice of prediction in general as well as to the debate about the responsibilities and boundaries of science that greeted the first weather predictions. University Of Chicago Press, 2005, 376 p., b&w illus., hardcover, $45.00.
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