Luke Howard --"The Godfather of Clouds"

From Luke Howard's Sketch Book

The story of Luke Howard, a very special person who loved and named clouds.

Cloudman Foreword
The Howard I came to know was a many-faceted man.
He was a "whole" man. His love of clouds, and
weather, started at an early age and never diminished.
He was not a scientist and never pretended to be one.
He trained for, and became, a businessman,
developing a firm that manufactured pharmaceutical
chemicals: Howards and Sons Ltd. The study of
weather, begun as a schoolboy, was close to his heart
and continued for a lifetime. Because of his many
contributions to the emerging science of meteorology,
in 1821 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society, the
highest honor his peers could confer. He was a lifelong
member of the Society of Friends (the Quakers) and
devoted much energy and time to the good works of
this denomination. He was a devoted family man. He
was a prolific writer and editor. His Seven lectures in
Meteorology comprised the first textbook in weather.
His Climate of London was the first book in urban
climatology.
Luke Howard properly earned the right to be called
the Godfather of Clouds.
Through the following 3 short essays, it is my hope
that many readers will come to appreciate this early

I have been involved with clouds in a serious

professional way for six decades. As seen in the bio
profile, during the first decade I was a weather
forecaster for the young and expanding Pan American
World airways as it pioneered air routes to the Orient
and to New Zealand and Australia, using the Martin
and Boeing four engine flying boats -- the Clippers.
During the last five decades I have been teaching and
writing about meteorology in a college setting.
Looking back, it seems quite odd that Luke Howard
was only a name to me until the '70s. I suppose I read
somewhere, perhaps in a cloud atlas, that "Luke
Luke Howard, F.R.S. (1772-1864)
Howard, English manufacturing chemist, originally
From a Painting by John Opie
proposed the names "Cumulus, Stratus, Nimbus and
Cirrus" but I knew little about Howard the man. On
the other hand, this is not odd at all, for there is very
little written about Howard in meteorological
literature that is read by the ordinary student, or by
the general public. Through this medium, I hope we
can do a little bit to change this.
My situation changed in 1971 when, through a
sabbatical leave from my (Linfield) college, I was able
to spend some months in the British Meteorological
office science library, locate in Bracknell some 50
miles SW of London. During this period I read
extensively and became intimately acquainted with the
history of clouds and cloud atlases, and inevitably with
Luke Howard and his contributions to the infant
science of meteorology, and, in particular, to the
establishment of cloud nomenclature.
The Howard I came to know was a many-faceted man.
He was a "whole" man. His love of clouds, and
weather, started at an early age and never diminished.
He was not a scientist and never pretended to be one.
He trained for, and became, a businessman,
developing a firm that manufactured pharmaceutical
chemicals: Howards and Sons Ltd. The study of
weather, begun as a schoolboy, was close to his heart
and continued for a lifetime. Because of his many
contributions to the emerging science of meteorology,
in 1821 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society, the
highest honor his peers could confer. He was a lifelong
member of the Society of Friends (the Quakers) and
devoted much energy and time to the good works of
this denomination. He was a devoted family man. He
was a prolific writer and editor. His Seven lectures in

Meteorology comprised the first textbook in weather.

His Climate of London was the first book in urban
climatology.
Cloudman.