James Pollard Espy

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James Pollard Espy Espy's signature from a letter

James Pollard Espy (born May 9, 1785 in Westmoreland County , Pennsylvania , † January 24, 1860 in Cincinnati , Ohio ) was an American meteorologist .

life and work

James Espy was born in 1785, the youngest of ten children of Presbyterians Elizabeth Patterson and Josiah Espy, a farmer. During his childhood the family moved first to Kentucky and later to Ohio . At the age of 18, Espy became a student at Transylvania University in Lexington , Kentucky. He graduated in law ( English Law ), was admitted to the bar in court and practiced from 1814 to 1817 in Xenia , Ohio. He had previously married Margaret Pollard in 1812 and took her last name as his second last name. In 1817 he took a part-time job as a teacher inFranklin Institute in Philadelphia .

Impressed by the meteorological writings of John Dalton and John Frederic Daniell , he began to conduct his own experiments and develop theories. In 1830 he explained that rising air cools down through expansion, and from around this year he mainly devoted himself to meteorology, for example the formation of rain , hurricanes , polar lights or tides . He investigated well-known phenomena such as cloud formation on mountain ranges and explained them using his theories. His work was recognized at the Franklin Institute , but by no means undisputed. Among other things, he criticized the observations and theories of the meteorologist William Charles Redfield in an anonymous contribution in January 1834, from which a long-term irreconcilable debate developed, which the journalist Peter Moore (* 1983) described as a "war of attrition".

Woodcut from 1836 to explain how storms develop

Espy tried with great commitment to systematize the observation methods, for example with standardized forms. In 1834 he established the Joint Committee on Meteorology as a cooperation between the Franklin Institute and the American Philosophical Society , which under his leadership built a network of stations for storm observation. Initial descriptions of storms led the State of Pennsylvania to donate $ 4,000 to provide a man in each county with a barometer , thermometer, and rain gauge. Espy was one of the first to use the telegraph to collect meteorological observations. In 1838, Espy asked Congress to introduce a national weather service - it was the first time meteorology had appeared in Congress records.

Illustration from the book The Philosophy of Storms , 1841.
Espy created the first series of weather maps of the United States for the US Army, here the southeast on January 30, 1843.

In 1836 he received the American Philosophical Society's Magellanic Premium for his Theory of rain . At the end of the 1830s he approached the congress with the claim that he could generate rain by slash and burn ( pyrocumulus ). The plan aroused enthusiasm and horror at the same time - it put Espy his reputation at risk. His application to finance a larger experiment, made in 1839, was rejected, which is also due to the poor cash situation due to the economic crisis of 1837 . In 1840 he went to Europe to study his theories of storm formation a. a. to be presented to the British Association for the Advancement of Science and the French Académie des Sciences . Here, François Arago attributed the following quote: "England has its Newton ., France Cuvier's and America's Espy" was released in 1841 ESPYs The Philosophy of Storms and he became a corresponding member of the Smithsonian Institution .

In 1843 he was hired by the United States Department of War to continue his meteorological research. He created the first series of weather maps for the United States and four meteorological reports by 1857. After Joseph Henry became the Smithsonian Institution's first secretary in 1846 , Espy and Henry worked together to build a network of volunteer weather observers .

Espy painted by Thomas Sully , oil on canvas , 1849

Espy succeeded in describing the thermodynamics of cloud formation largely correctly for the first time , taking into account the role of latent heat in condensation . He also developed a theory of convection and the first description of the land-sea wind system .

According to Peter Moore, Espy's style was “not only bold, it also had something cocky about it”; he was “sometimes poisonous and condescending” towards the “cultivated politeness” customary at the time in academic discourse. Alexander Dallas Bache described him shortly after his death as a sociable person full of bonhomie (good-naturedness) and enthusiasm. Because of his search for the causes of the tornadoes , he was referred to in public, for example by reporters , as the "Storm King".

Espy died childless on January 24, 1860 in Cincinnati . His wife had died in 1850.

Publications

  • Theory of rain, hail, snow and the water spout, deduced from the latent caloric of vapor and the specific caloric of atmospheric air. In: Transactions of the Geological Society of Pennsylvania , Volume 1, Part 2, 1835, doi: 10.5962 / bhl.title.83715 , pp. 342-346 .
  • Theory of rain, hail, and snow, water-spouts, land-spouts, variable winds, and barometric fluctuations . Philadelphia 1836, OCLC 489056079 .
  • Philosophy of Storms . Charles C. Little and James Brown, Boston 1841.
  • The Human Will: A Series of Posthumous Essays on Moral Accountability, the Legitimate Object of Punishment, and the Powers of the Will . Office of the Dial, Cincinnati 1860 ( posthumous ).

Web links

Commons : James Pollard Espy  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Espy, James Pollard . In: Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography .
  2. ↑ James Pollard Espy: The Human Will: A Series of Posthumous Essays on Moral Accountability, the Legitimate Object of Punishment, and the Powers of the Will . Office of the Dial, Cincinnati 1860. Memoir , p .
  3. ↑ a b c James Rodger Fleming: Espy, James Pollard . In: American National Biography , Oxford University Press. doi : 10.1093 / anb / 9780198606697.article.1300501 .
  4. ↑ a b Peter Moore: The weather experiment: From the pioneers of meteorology . Translated from the English by Michael Hein. Piper, Munich 2018, ISBN 978-3-492-97788-3 , pp. 202-207 (e-book edition).
  5. ^ A b J. E. McDonald: James Espy and the Beginnings of Cloud Thermodynamics . In: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society , October 1963, doi : 10.1175 / 1520-0477-44.10.634 .
  6. ^ Napier Shaw: Manual of meteorology . Volume I. Cambridge University Press, 1926, p. 136 . OCLC 1048803914 .
  7. ↑ a b c d e f Armand N. Spitz: Meteorology in the Franklin Institute . In: Journal of the Franklin Institute 237 (4), April 1944, pp. 271-286, doi : 10.1016 / S0016-0032 (44) 90165-1 .
  8. ↑ James P. Espy: Remarks on the height of the aurora borealis, with a review of the accounts of some of the most remarkable auroral arches . In: Journal of the Franklin Institute 13 (5), May 1832, pp. 294-302, doi : 10.1016 / S0016-0032 (34) 90848-6 .
  9. ^ Notes of an observer - Meteorology . In: Journal of the Franklin Institute 17 (1), January 1834, pp. 9-11, doi : 10.1016 / S0016-0032 (34) 90960-1
  10. ^ Second report of the joint committee on meteorology of the American philosophical society and Franklin Institute . In: Journal of the Franklin Institute 21 (6), June 1836, pp. 386-393. Graphic from p. 392 .
  11. ^ A b Eric R. Miller: The evolution of meteorological institutions in the United States . In: Alfred J. Henry (Ed.): Monthly Weather Review . Volume 59, No. 1, March 1931, p. 2.
  12. ↑ a b c Eric R. Miller: American Pioneers in Meteorology . In: Monthly Weather Review , July 1933, doi : 10.1175 / 1520-0493 (1933) 61 <189: APIM> 2.0.CO; 2 .
  13. ↑ a b James Pollard Espy . In: Encyclopaedia Britannica . Retrieved November 21, 2019.
  14. ^ A b First Report on Meteorology, to the Surgeon General of the United States Army. October 9, 1843.
  15. ^ Early Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society for the Promotion of Useful Knowledge, Compiled by One of the Secretaries, from the Manuscript Minutes of Its Meetings from 1744-1838 . In: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society . 22 (119), Part III, July 1885, pp. 682-683, JSTOR 982588 .
  16. ↑ James P. Espy: Theory of rain, hail, and snow, water-spouts, land-spouts, variable winds, and barometric fluctuations . Philadelphia 1836, OCLC 489056079 .
  17. ↑ Peter Moore: The weather experiment: From the pioneers of meteorology . Translated from the English by Michael Hein. Piper, Munich 2018, ISBN 978-3-492-97788-3 , p. 223 ff. (E-book edition).
  18. ↑ Peter Moore: The weather experiment: From the pioneers of meteorology . Translated from the English by Michael Hein. Piper, Munich 2018, ISBN 978-3-492-97788-3 , p. 233 (e-book edition).
  19. ^ John D. Cox: Storm Watchers: The Turbulent History of Weather Prediction from Franklin's Kite to El Niño . John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken 2002, ISBN 0-471-38108-X , p. 38 .
  20. ↑ Peter Moore: The weather experiment: From the pioneers of meteorology . Translated from the English by Michael Hein. Piper, Munich 2018, ISBN 978-3-492-97788-3 , p. 234 (e-book edition).
  21. ↑ a b c d Alexander Dallas Bache in Annual report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution , 1860, pp. 108-111 .
  22. ^ Napier Shaw: Manual of meteorology . Volume II. 2nd edition. Cambridge University Press, 1936, p. 283 , OCLC 1048803706 .
  23. ↑ Peter Moore: The weather experiment: From the pioneers of meteorology . Translated from the English by Michael Hein. Piper, Munich 2018, ISBN 978-3-492-97788-3 , p. 205 (e-book edition).
  24. ↑ Espy, James Pollard . In: Thomas William Herringshaw : Herringshaw's National Library of American Biography. Volume 2. American Publishers' Association, Chicago 1909, p. 384.
  25. ↑ Bruce Sinclair: Gustavus A. Hyde, Professor Espy's volunteers, and the development of systematic weather observation. In: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 46 (12), 1965, pp. 779-784, doi : 10.1175 / 1520-0477-46.12.779 .
  26. ↑ Lee Sandlin, Storm Kings: The Untold History of America's First Tornado Chasers . Pantheon Books, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-307-37852-1 , p. 55 .
personal data
SURNAME Espy, James Pollard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American meteorologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 9, 1785
PLACE OF BIRTH Westmoreland County , Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH January 24, 1860
Place of death Cincinnati , Ohio