da Vinci, Leonardo (1452–1519)		Precursor Era Contributors to Meteorology (Renaissance [~1400 AD] through World War I)

Below are checklists of Precursor Era Contributors to Meteorology on postal items (stamps, souvenir sheets, aerogrammes, postal cards, etc.) and numismatic items (banknotes and coins). Catalog numbers, years of issue, and notes on the items featured are given when available. If readers know of additional information or images, please contact the authors using the e-mail addresses at the bottom of this page.

See also The School of Athens (painting by Raphael, ~1511) for additional items associated with one name, marked with SoA in parentheses after that name.

The Contributors on this page are listed in alphabetical order above and are presented in chronological order below.

Sejong (King Sejong the Great of the Sejong Dynasty) (15th Century)

King Sejong the Great of the Chosun Dynasty ruled Korea from 1418 to the mid-1400s. He sought to provide his subjects with adequate food and clothing through improvements in agriculture. Since droughts plagued the kingdom, he directed every village to measure the amount of rain that fell. This was done through the use of a rain gauge invented by his son, the crown prince Munjong, in 1441 (some 220 years before the European Christopher Wren invented his rain gauge). Munjong reasoned that instead of digging into the Earth to attempt to measure rainfall, it would be preferable to use a standardized container. The design was probably based on gauges from much earlier times in China or India. King Sejong sent a rain gauge to every village, and they were used as the official tool to measure the harvest potential and determine the land taxes. This is one of the earliest documented cases of the development of an instrument designed to provide a quantitative estimate of a meteorological variable.

Cusanus (Nicholas of Cusa, Nicolas de Cues) (1401–1464)

Cusanus was a German cardinal, philosopher and administrator with interests in mathematics, astronomy and the physical sciences. He experimented with measuring the humidity of the air by weighing a piece of wool or a sponge when it was very dry, and again when it had absorbed moisture from the air. The idea for this procedure may have come from the classical Arab natural philosophers who had studied the physical sciences.

Alberti, Leon Battista (1404–1472)

Leon Alberti was an Italian early Renaissance architect, artist and writer. In 1450, he invented the first mechanical anemometer. This instrument consisted of a swinging disk hanging vertically in calm conditions. In windy conditions, the disk would swing upward due to the force exerted on it by the wind. By the angle of inclination of the disk the wind force could be calculated, and in turn the wind speed estimated. The same type of anemometer was later re-invented by Leonardo da Vinci (in the late 1400s) and Robert Hooke (in the 1660s). This type of anemometer, generally referred to as a 'swinging plate' or 'deflection plate' anemometer, was used operationally by the USSR and some Soviet-bloc countries as late as the mid-20th Century. Mikhail Lomonosov experimented with the first rotational anemometer in around 1750. The first modern wind measuring instrument, the rotating cup anemometer, was invented by Thomas Robinson in 1846.

Regiomontanus (Johannes Müller von Königsberg) (1436–1476)

Regiomontanus was a mathematician, astrologer and astronomer of the German Renaissance, active in Vienna, Buda (Hungary) and Nuremberg. His birth name was Johannes Müller but as was the custom of the time, he adopted the Latin name of his town of birth, Königsberg, which is in present-day Bavaria. He later wrote under the Latinized name of Ioannes de Monteregio (or Monte Regio, or Regio Monte) and for that reason came to be known as Regiomontanus.

Regiomontanus was entrusted with the critical translation of Ptolemy's Almagest, which was later used as a textbook by Copernicus and Galileo.

Astrometeorology (relating astronomical phenomena to the weather) has roots in India, Persia, Greece and Rome as well as in the early Islamic scientific tradition. Regiomontanus made significant Renaissance contributions to the techniques of astrometeorology.

In an article titled "Medieval Weather Prediction" (Physics Today, 74(4), 38, (2021); doi: 10.1063/PT.3.4724), Anne Lawrence-Mathers summarized those contributions:

"Much of the time-consuming work of calculating the planetary positions was alleviated by the contribution of the astronomer Regiomontanus. He produced a calendar and Ephemerides, or book of astronomical tables, both of which were made available in print beginning in 1476. The large volumes provided not only full planetary data but also guidelines for their interpretation and a table of corrections to apply when adjusting the coordinates for a particular city or region in Europe. The powers of the planets in each sign and each aspect were tabulated in numerical form, and the lunar mansions¹ were included in a table."

"Regiomontanus provided rules for producing prognostications, with the first section addressing weather forecasting. The rules applied standard procedures of the time and appear to be how Regiomontanus conducted his own practice. He identified specific planetary occurrences as especially influential. For example, an opposition of the Moon and Jupiter, when occupying the fire sign of Aries and the water sign of Scorpio, will generate clouds. If the Moon is moving toward Mercury, the forecast will include what Regiomontanus called an opening of the doors of the winds. But for traditionalists, he appended a section after his rules that offered the ever-popular weather forecasting according to al-Kindi."

"High demand for Regiomontanus' works meant that multiple printed versions rapidly appeared, many of them pirated. He was acclaimed as the greatest astrologer of his time: Cardinal Bessarion and King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary employed him, and his work was used by Christopher Columbus to calculate the dates of coming storms. Besides Regiomontanus, several well-known early-modern scientists espoused astrometeorology, including Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler."

¹Lunar mansions were an astronomical construct credited to Indian astrologers. They were based on 28 fixed stars or star groupings, each of which occupied a sector of the Moon's path through the zodiac. Each mansion was characterized in terms of its degree of humidity, which was related to the astrometeorological effect of the Moon. "The effect of the mansion occupied by the Moon was especially influential for the weather four times per month. The general monthly pattern of weather could be forecast by drawing up charts for each of the four occasions. If the Moon was in or moving into a wet mansion, for example, then the outcome would normally be rain. However, a significant interaction of the Moon and Saturn would modify the outcome considerably. Similarly, the disruptive influence of Mars would make storms, thunder and hail more likely. The factors would diminish in power as the Moon traveled in its orbit and would be supplanted when the next key point was reached." (quoted from Lawrence-Mathers, Anne: Medieval Weather Prediction. Physics Today, 74(4), 38, (2021); doi: 10.1063/PT.3.4724).

da Vinci, Leonardo1 (1452–1519)

Leonardo da Vinci was a towering figure of Renaissance art and science. He invented the balance hygrometer some time in the period 1480-1486 (a hygrometer is a device used to measure atmospheric humidity). He also designed a deflection plate anemometer and an anemoscope (a type of wind vane). (Leon Battista Alberti was actually the first to design a deflection plate anemometer, in 1450). In da Vinci's notes for the anemometer, he mentions that one would "need a clock for 'distance traversed per hour, with the force of the wind'". With respect to his hygrometers, da Vinci made the comment that they could be modo a vedere quando si guasta il tempo (used for showing when the weather is breaking).

¹The drawing in red chalk is widely (though not universally) accepted as an original self-portrait of da Vinci. However, the subject is apparently of a greater age than Leonardo ever achieved. But it is possible that he drew this picture of himself deliberately aged, specifically for Raphael's portrait of him in The School of Athens.

¹In the 1970s, four special balloon flights, Da Vinci-1 to -4, were organized by the aeronaut and artist Vera Simons. She designed them to combine science and art. Simons worked with Dr. Rudolf J. Englemann, a NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) scientist and former Air Force meteorologist who was a specialist on the transport of low-level atmospheric pollutants. Simons planned to use the unique perspective from a balloon to gather landscape and cloud images that would be used in producing works of art. Englemann assembled a package of scientific experiments from 25 universities. Funding for the Da Vinci project came from the National Geographic Society, the Atomic Energy Commission, some private companies, and NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration). The first flight took place in 1974 in New Mexico and collected data on atmospheric temperature and winds. In the summer of 1976 the second flight, from St. Louis, MO, to Griffin, IN, gathered data on the atmospheric mixing and diffusion and transport of urban air pollutants. The third flight, with similar goals, was also launched from St. Louis. The fourth flight, known as Da Vinci Transamerica, was launched from Oregon in 1979 and emphasized the artistic elements of the program along with the new goal of reaching Norfolk VA in a trans-continental flight. It carried Simons, Engelmann, flight surgeon Fred Hyde and NBC cameraman Randy Birch (who did recordings for the Today Show) eastward. Though a storm forced it to land in northwestern Ohio, it nevertheless established a new ballooning overland distance record of 3223 km.

Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni (1463–1494)

Pico della Mirandola was an Italian Renaissance nobleman and philosopher.

"The Holy Roman Empire witnessed the growth, if not the beginning, of systematic recordkeeping of meteorological observations that were used for ephemerides (Pfister et al. 1999). In Italy, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) reported tracking the weather for 130 days, learning that its changes did not seem to correspond to what astrologers supposedly taught they should be (Pico della Mirandola 1557, 446-447). Consequently, he advocated using the natural, noncelestial forms of divination of the weather possessed by farmers, sailors, and physicians in order to develop empirical knowledge that could lead to accurate forecasting (Mandosio 2013)". (quoted from p. 2182 of Martin, C. (2022). Meteorology in Renaissance Science. In: Sgarbi, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14169-5_370).

Pico della Mirandola is included in Raphael's painting The School of Athens. The special School of Athens web page identifies Pico della Mirandola in the painting, includes all philatelic items that feature it in full or in part, and identifies the Contributors found in those items. Those Pico della Mirandola items are not duplicated in this page unless they also include a reference to him from a different source.

Other references:

Mandosio, J.-M. 2013. Meteorology and weather forecasting in the middle ages. In Die mantischen Kunste und die Epistemologie prognostischer Wissenschaften im Mittelalter, ed. Alexander Fidora, 167-181. Cologne: Böhlau Verlag.
Pfister, C., et al. 1999. Daily weather observations in sixteenth-century Europe. Climatic Change, 43: 111-150. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:100550511.
Pico della Mirandola, G. 1557. Opera omnia. Basel: Petrina.

Paracelsus (Theophrastus Philippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim) (1493–1541)

Paracelsus was a Swiss physician who studied the relationships between climate and weather and medicine. He wrote that anyone who studied winds, lightning and weather would understand what caused illness.

Nostradamus (Michel de Nostre Dame) (1503–1566)

Nostradamus was a French seer and visionary. He made many predictions of future events, but their real meaning is obscure and subject to interpretation. For example, when asked about tomorrow's weather, he wrote:

In the time of moons a man will be
A ponderer of cloud and raging storm.
Not for sake of probing philosophy,
But more because the cloudy brain's the norm.

From this we can interpret that he was critical of a preoccupation with the weather, and reluctant to make weather forecasts. Nevertheless, he was beset throughout his life by requests to "divine the skies," a task that he considered beneath him. The Queen of France was especially interested in his meteorological talents and begged him nightly to provide a forecast so that she would know "what to wear on the morrow". After a few of these forecasts, he finally refused, saying, "Flay me if you will, but I will not be seduced again into using my powers to predict your rainy day! Besides, would you not rather hear of the wonderful future of mankind than all this atmospheric gloom and doom"?

José de Acosta (1540–1600)

José Acosta was a Spanish Jesuit missionary and naturalist who served in South America. He studied earthquakes, volcanoes, tides, currents, magnetic declinations and meteorological phenomena. In his work Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias, published in 1590, he provided an explanation of the prevailing winds in the subtropical and middle latitudes. He attributed the regular easterly winds of the subtropics (the trade winds) to the movement of the heavens about a stationary Earth. According to his idea, part of this movement, transferred to the tropics, resulted in the trade winds. Acosta also attempted to explain the westerly or southwesterly prevailing winds of the mid-latitudes as being related to ascending or descending currents in the atmosphere. This idea has in it a hint of what is now known to be the atmospheric general circulation.

Acosta was the first Westerner to investigate altitude sickness and so has been considered a pioneer of aeronautical medicine. In his work Natural and Moral History of the Indies (1590), he postulated the origin of American natives from Asia via a land bridge route, more than a century before the discovery of the Bering Strait.

Brahe, Tycho (1546–1601)

Tycho Brahe was a Danish astronomer and astrologer who believed that the weather could be predicted through astronomical and astrological techniques.

As early as 1564, Brahe was working to provide an empirical basis for his astrometeorological ideas. In that year, he observed the heavens during the 12 days of Christmas to test his theory that the weather of the coming year could be forecast based on those observations. In his work De nova stella in 1573, he set his belief that the probable weather for each day could be predicted on the basis of heavenly configurations, and presented his principles for the production of astrometeorological almanacs. His theory attributed most weight to the Moon in varying the solar-controlled climate, on account of its proximity to the Earth. However, he warned readers not to expect too much from weather predictions, both because the motions and effects of the heavenly bodies had yet to be properly explored, and because the fluidity of sub-lunary matter could sometimes hasten events or delay them. He recommended that weather observations be kept so that prediction could be placed on a sounder footing in the future. In fact, from 1October 1582 to 21 April 1597 he did just that: he kept a daily record of the weather in Hven, and in 1585 published, under the name of one of his students, an astrometeorological calendar for the coming year based on those observations. A few years later, in 1591, book based on his studies was published, also under the name of one of his students. It contained 399 aphorisms for weather prediction on the basis of the sky's appearance, the motions of the heavenly bodies, and the behaviour of animals (this approach is reminiscent of that of Theophrastus in his Book of Signs). Brahe's involvement in the book became clear when it was later revealed that he had composed its preface. Brahe continued to believe in astrological/astronomical weather prediction, although it become clear to others that local conditions influenced the weather much more than the heavens.

In his practical astronomical work, Brahe was aware that a star observed near the horizon appears with a greater altitude than the real one, due to atmospheric refraction, and he worked out tables for the correction of this error. He was, in fact, the first astronomer to make such corrections for atmospheric refraction. He also made observations of a comet and used a parallax method to show that it had to be outside the atmosphere. This conclusion went against Aristotle's idea of the immutability of the heavens.

¹The Round Tower Observatory in Copenhagen is Europe's oldest functioning astronomical observatory. It was built it 1642. Brahe died in 1601, after losing favour with King Christian IV in 1597. Despite that, the observatory dome at the top of the Round Tower was built exactly like Brahe's Stjerneborg ("Star Castle") Observatory that he built in 1581. To the right of the entrance to the Round Tower is a bust of Brahe, and also a small piece of Brahe's burial cloth from his final resting place in Prague is displayed in the Round Tower's collection. Both of these items confirm Brahe's relationship with the Round Tower Observatory.
²These postal cards are only some of a large number of similar cards issued by China for various scientists. No effort is made to list all such cards.

Bruce, William Speirs (1867–1921)

William Bruce was a Scottish naturalist who with the support of Scottish meteorologist R.T. Omond obtained a post as meteorologist at the Ben Nevis Observatory, where he worked on meteorological research in 1895 and 1896. The meteorologist R. Mossman was known to the two men and had worked at Ben Nevis as well. The observatory sat atop Ben Nevis which at 1344 m is the highest point in the British Isles. It has extensive fog and, in the winter, cold and stormy winter weather. Bruce dreamed of conducting science in polar environments and the assignment to Ben Nevis allowed him to develop his skills in polar meteorology. The knowledge he gained about the design and operation of a meteorological observatory in a harsh environment would serve him well in1903 when under his leadership a weather observatory was set up on Laurie Island in the sub-Antarctic region of the South Atlantic.

With strong support from Omond, Bruce assumed command of the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition in 1902, and with Mossman as meteorologist and magnetic observer sailed to the Antarctic in the ship Scotia (the expedition was also called the Scotia expedition). In late 1902 Bruce and his team established their meteorological and magnetic observatory at Laurie Island in the South Orkneys. They called it Omond House in honour their patron. The observatory was transferred to Argentine control in February 1904. Mossman stayed on as interim chief until January 1905 to ensure a smooth transition. This meteorological station, known by its Spanish name of Observatorio de las Islas Orcadas del Sur, has been in continuous operation since 1904 and is the oldest weather observing station in the Antarctic area.

In his expedition travel Bruce used the "Verascope", an all-metal stereo camera designed by instrument maker Jules Richard. The rigidity of the camera minimized any internal distortion effects, and its durability made it very likely that the camera would have a long problem-free life.

Bacon, Francis (1561–1626)

Francis Bacon was an English natural philosopher who believed that in the scientific arena one should touch and feel and measure things for oneself. As such, he was one of the earliest exponents of the scientific method, and so helped usher in a new era for science. Bacon had an insatiable curiosity about all natural phenomena. In his Preparative toward a Natural and Experimental History (written in 1620), he presented a large number of areas ("histories") in which he wished to "examine nature herself", including the following ones related to meteorology:

• History of lightnings, thunderbolts, thunders, coruscations;
• History of winds and sudden blasts and undulations of the air;
• History of rainbows;
• History of clouds, as they are seen above;
• History of the blue expanse, of twilight, of mock-suns, mock-moons, haloes, various colors of the Sun; and of every variety in the aspect of the heavens caused by the medium;
• History of showers, ordinary, stormy and prodigious; and also of waterspouts (as they are called) and the like;
• History of hail, snow, frost, hoar-frost, fog, dew and the like;
• History of all other things that fall or descend from above, and that are generated in the upper region;
• History of sounds in the upper region (if there be any), besides thunder;
• History of air as a whole, or in the configuration of the world;
• History of the seasons or temperatures of the year, as well according to the variations of Regions as according to accidents of Times and periods of Years; of floods, heats, droughts and the like.

Unfortunately there was just not enough time, and Bacon was not able to expound upon all these subjects. He did, however, manage to publish in 1622 his work Historia Ventorum (translated as The Natural and Experimental History of Winds).

In 1620, Bacon noted and called attention to the similarities in the continental outlines of western Africa and eastern South America. That was the first vague hint of the theory of continental drift, which would be developed more than 300 years later by Wegener, du Toit, and other researchers.

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642)

Galileo Galilei was an Italian astronomer, mathematician, physicist and philosopher who was one of the pioneers of the modern scientific method. He believed that the laws of nature could be expressed in mathematics. This approach led Galileo to refute many of the conclusions that Aristotle had put forth in his work Meteorologica.

Galileo invented the thermoscope, a precursor to the thermometer, in around 1596. He wanted to measure hot and cold during the period he lived in Padua, Italy. His thermoscope consisted of a hollow glass bulb about the size of an egg, with a long thin glass neck open at its end. The bulb was heated with the hands, the unit was inverted and the neck opening submerged in a vessel containing water. When the hands were removed from the bulb, the water rose to a certain height in the neck above the level of the water in the vessel. This height depended on the temperature of the air: the colder the air, the higher the water would rise. There was no temperature scale on this instrument. Other inventors would later independently construct thermoscopes. The Italian inventor Santorio Santorio added a scale to his air thermoscope in about 1612.

Galileo coined the term Aurora Borealis (northern dawn) to describe the northern lights in or around 1619.

Near the end of his life, Galileo considered the problem of why water could not be pumped higher than 32 feet (10 m) above the level of a reservoir. His student Torricelli continued this work, culminating in his invention of the mercury barometer in 1644.

See also the Galileo spacecraft, which was launched in 1989 and sent to explorer Jupiter and its moons from 1995 to 2003 when its mission ended.

¹These postal cards are only some of a large number of similar cards issued by China for various scientists. No effort is made to list all such cards.

Kepler, Johannes (1571–1630)

Johannes Kepler was a German astronomer and mathematician. In addition to his many other scientific works, he wrote one on snowflakes in 1611: A New Year's Gift, or The Six-Cornered Snowflake, in which he discussed the "reason for the six-angled shape of the snow crystals" (i.e. snowflakes) and "the forms and symmetries in nature". This work is the first known scientific reference to snowflakes and snow crystals.

Kepler believed that the weather patterns on the Earth were related to the geometrical relationships between the Earth and the planets. For example, he thought that the conjunction of Saturn and the Sun could produce cold weather. Since the positions of the Earth and the planets could be calculated in advance, then the weather could be as well. Kepler therefore made the first known long range weather forecasts, including one of a bitterly cold winter in Germany in 1593 which, it is said, turned out to be correct.

In 1593 Kepler began recording the daily weather in Graz, in the hope of clarifying the influence of the stars on the weather. He started similar observations in Prague in 1604. The Ephemerides Part II, for 1621 and 1629, contained Kepler's daily weather observations for 1617 to 1620. His calendars between 1617 and 1624 included weather predictions. He started another set of weather observations in Sagan in 1628.

See also the Kepler satellite, which is a NASA space telescope whose mission is to discover Earth-like planets near other stars.